The Unown Conspiracy: The Murder of Emperor Alph
by YamiRuss
Summary: The events surrounding the death of Alph III have long puzzled historians of ancient Johto. Archaeologist Claire investigates the circumstances of the ancient emperor's death firsthand and discovers among new pokémon the threads of a murder conspiracy.
1. Enter the Archaeologist

_**Usual disclaimer:** I don't own Pokemon, unless you count individual copies of the video games. I only own a few copies of Doctor Who seasons and a Netflix subscription that lets me watch most episodes whenever I want. I do, however, enjoy both franchises immensely and wish to tell a story combining the two._

_**Disclaimer rebuttal:** Is it really necessary to tell you all that? When someone at school mentions the Dallas Cowboys, do you assume his parents own the franchise? Yeah, I thought not..._

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><p>Enter the Archaeologist<p>

Claire climbed down from her flygon's back and gazed upon the massive, manmade crater in the mountainside. The hole was twice as deep as when she left last night, but now she could see something at the bottom. Finally, months of studying, searching, and digging were about to pay off. She looked around proudly at the small excavation camp: two tents to shield two dozen witnesses from the blazing sun.

"It's a shame more people aren't interested in archaeology," she spoke to her bug-like dragon as she placed her hand on its scaly head right between its long antennae. The man-sized pokémon rumbled affectionately and pushed into her hand. "Let's go check on the team."

A welcome breeze blew through Claire's short, black hair as soon as she stepped under the tarp. She walked straight up to her assistant Belle and, without offering a greeting, adjusted her glasses and looked at the map on the table.

"Did we find an entrance?" she asked.

Belle smiled sarcastically. "The diglett team drilled us a tunnel up to the southern wall. We have the ground team clearing out the debris now." She placed her chubby hand on Claire's thin shoulder to get her attention. When Claire finally turned her blue eyes to her assistant, Belle said, "Good morning, by the way."

"Right. Good morning. How are you? How're the kids?" Claire's attempt at small talk was horrendous, and yet terribly amusing to those who understood that she wasn't rude—she was anxious. Extensive research, stretches of sleepless nights, and a tendency to get too wrapped up in work to remember to eat turned Claire from a pleasant, intelligent, and healthy explorer into the curt, narrow-minded, and skinny woman she'd become.

"Did you remember to eat last night?"

Claire sighed. "I ate at the Solaceon Grille and stayed overnight at the Comfort Inn. Then Indy and I came here first thing." She looked from the map to one of the men in the diglett team. His tiny, thumb-shaped, mole pokémon rested in the dirt right by his feet. Claire hollered for him to get that diglett out of the sun.

Belle whispered in Claire's ear, "What did you eat?"

"Poached magikarp, I think. That or grilled psyduck."

"You can't tell the difference between fish and poultry?"

"I had a lot on my mind." Finally looking away from the map, she turned to Belle and asked, "Are we ready for this now?"

She glanced past Belle and caught sight of a strangely-dressed man. He wore a shiny, black vest over a white dress shirt with a bright, blue ascot. Over his face, he wore thin-framed sunglasses with lenses dark enough to keep secrets. "Who's he?"

After taking a look to see which "he" Claire meant, Belle turned back and said, "Oh. He's a reporter for the Pokémon News Press here to do an article about the dig."

"Are you sure? Awfully funny dress code for a reporter. Who wears an ascot anymore?"

"He's not undercover," Belle pointed out. "Besides, he has credentials."

Claire also noticed the small crowd of children standing just on the other side of the reporter. "Are they reporters, too?"

"Don't be silly. They're school kids here to witness a piece of history. Aren't you always saying it's a shame more people aren't involved in our projects?"

Claire blew her hair out of her face. "I don't remember saying that." Her flygon Indy lifted his head and looked at her with those big, glossy eyes. Caught in the act, she said, "Fine, maybe once or twice. They can stay. Let's just get things moving." She looked at Indy and muttered, "You've got to learn to stop tattling on me."

"You could just stop being snarky," Belle suggested, "but then you wouldn't be you."

Claire watched as the Pokémon Trainers—volunteers from Solaceon Town who spent the entire previous day learning excavation techniques—commanded their sandshrews (large, burrowing mouse pokémon) and geodudes (mobile rock pokémon) to break down and clear the rocky rubble from the tunnel.

Digletts were perfect excavation pokémon because of their size, speed, and meticulous focus. These pokémon could break away the surrounding rock without damaging the ruins themselves. Once they cleared a tunnel, other small, ground pokémon were great for clearing debris. The real beauty of recruiting pokémon was the speed. No piece of machinery could clear away rocks and debris as quickly as a team of ground-types.

"This is exciting," the reporter commented when he sidled up next to Claire. He wore a big, goofy grin as he spoke—the kind of wide, triangular grin that let her see every one of his teeth. "I always wanted to see the unveiling of the Solaceon Ruins."

"Just stay back and don't disturb the diglett," Claire told him without even looking at him.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it."

Claire took a few steps toward the tunnel while the pokémon continued their work. Despite her single-minded goal of entering the ruins and discovering the secrets hidden within, she still noticed the sounds around her. Trainers continued to give commands and healing ointments to their digletts, the school kids chattered amongst themselves, and her flygon did _not_ follow her up the mountainside.

Indy was, in fact, standing with the reporter and rumbling as if having a real conversation. The reporter just laughed and patted Indy in the sweet spot directly between the antennae.

"Indy!" his master shouted to get his attention. The flygon quickly turned and buzzed through the air, kicking up grass and dust, until he rejoined Claire. She looked curiously at the reporter and then back to her flygon. "I need to keep the site as flawless as possible, so you'll have to stay in your pokéball, okay?" Indy nuzzled Claire's hip to acknowledge that the pokéball wasn't his favorite place, but he understood her intent. With a flash of light, the bug-like dragon disappeared inside the apricot-sized pokéball.

The Ground Team pokémon did good work. Claire stepped through the rocky portal into a surprising cavern. She could still hear the pokémon working in the darkness. They already cleared the area immediately surrounding the stone walls of the ruins and set up hardened mud walls to secure the cavern ceiling.

Unfortunately, her visual acuity was weak inside the cave. She pulled another pokéball from her waist and opened it near the ground. A flash of light produced a small, white, squirrel pokémon with glowing cheeks. The pachirisu chattered for a moment as Claire handed it a berry from her pocket. After polishing off the berry quickly, the squirrel pokémon ran excitedly in circles.

"Are you ready to discover the unknown?" Claire asked. Her pokémon squeaked and his cheeks began sparking brightly, illuminating the cave well enough for Claire to see the ruins.

The ruins appeared to be some kind of temple, shaped largely like a tetrahedron with the top leveled off due to erosion and wear. Crumbling columns surrounded the temple and lined the walkway in front of Claire's pachirisu. The patterns of columns on one side suggested a courtyard of some sort, but that kind of research and study would wait for Belle; Claire was much more interested in the temple itself.

"Take the lead, Chan." Her pokémon darted a few feet ahead of her, always keeping a quick but cautious pace. The pokémon had to match Claire's slow, intentional pace, yet make up for the fact that his legs were only the length of Claire's thumbs. But with as many times as Claire and Chan teamed up to explore previously undiscovered grounds, they worked up an effective level of synchronicity.

Claire wasn't afraid of poison-tipped arrows, moving walls, or rolling boulders. Those kinds of magical traps only existed in the movies. What she worried about more was molds or poisonous air that could render her sick just by excavating. And occasionally she found dangerous pokémon lurking in her untouched-by-man environments. But Chan was as skilled and perceptive as any pokémon at noticing dangers to his archaeologist, and Claire trusted his response to keep them both safe.

"No issues?" she asked as he sniffed the air for but a moment before moving on. "Okay, then. Let's go see what's hidden inside."

The electricity sparking from Chan's tail really helped with visibility, but there was one thing Claire needed him to do before she was really comfortable with her surroundings. "Use Flash."

Chan curled up to make himself as small as possible before in order to cycle his electrical power back and forth through his body, increasing the speed of conduction and the intensity of his power. Brimming with electrical energy, he released the electricity in a powerful burst of light that carried through to the ceiling and illuminated the area just as if there were fluorescent tubes posted overhead.

Claire had her eyes closed during that exercise, but she opened them now to find it much easier to navigate. "Perfect," she said as she tossed Chan another berry and watched him scarf it down in one bite.

The room was dusty, marked by erosion, and covered with rubble. Yet the cinderblock floors appeared solid. There was some kind of moss growing in the creases, suggesting there was moisture and nutrients present within these ruins. "Substance Bryophyta," she spoke as she picked a small sample and bagged it. "Let's see what Colter can learn from you."

Two eroded stairways descended on the east side of the room and a third on the west. It wasn't unusual to see stairs in ruins, but this was the first time she saw them underground and in the mountains. She was terribly curious about what may lie beneath her feet, but she still wasn't finished with this room yet. Rock samples and dust samples, all potentially representative of an extinct epoch and filled with the knowledge of ancient time, she placed in separate bags, as well, and sealed them tightly for her geology friends.

Sometimes, it's impossible to shake that feeling of being watched. Eight eyes opened slowly on the northern wall and focused on the quiet intruder. They watched in silence her movement across the floor collecting samples, taking pictures, and making notes and sketches in her notepad. Some eyes chose to follow Chan as he darted back and forth around the room, burning off his excess energy.

Suddenly, Chan stopped and looked up at the wall, but the eyes were all closed and nothing seemed out of place. The pachirisu still felt like something was odd, and so he bounded over to Claire's side and began squeaking.

"What?" She couldn't really understand Chan's squeaking, but she caught from his tone that he was bothered, and his body language—the way his head faced her but his body was turned toward the back wall—indicated the location of his disturbance. She stood from her spot and followed the pokémon to examine the wall.

Six lines of text, each with two distinct words written in letters more than a foot and a half tall, set on the wall like an introduction to the ruins. Claire adjusted her glasses before taking a picture of the pattern, just in case the characters decided to move.

Unown did that sometimes when people weren't looking.


	2. The Language of the Unown

The Language of the Unown

Claire and her team spent two weeks searching the ruins, collecting and analyzing all the samples they could to learn more about the ancient civilization that built the temple beneath a mountain. Shockingly, the foundation of the temple was deep underground and still very well preserved. Four stories below the mountain surface were filled with empty rooms marked by little except writing on the walls.

Having sketched the entire floor plan of the ruins, Claire counted eleven dead end rooms, ones with small pieces of debris and rubble that might lend the only clues to the temple's purpose. On this drizzly morning, she entered a twelfth dead end, and the only room thus far undocumented.

While she and Chan circled the largest room taking pictures, she noticed more writing on the wall. Odd that words were only written in the first room and in the last room, but what really fascinated her was the language in this message.

Claire recognized the script on the walls as unown, the least understood of all pokémon species. Unown can be found in a variety of body shapes—twenty-eight to be specific; every once in a while, an extreme mutation is reported. On average, they can be a foot and a half high and weigh eleven pounds; their skin is flat and black, and the single eye is the only organ they have in common with other pokémon. Although they are psychic-type pokémon, they do not speak to people except through written words.

The appendages of unown make their bodies resemble letters of the alphabet. As mysterious and somewhat mischievous beings, they moved through the air and arranged themselves in a way to speak with those who visited. Claire knew the importance of taking a picture each time she entered in case the unown awoke and changed the message conveyed. The message in the first room never changed; in fact, the message listed directions through the temple to this very spot.

But for some reason, the message in this room was illegible. Despite her familiarity with unown and her studies in linguistics, Claire was unable to interpret the message.

"What are you trying to tell me?" she asked as she gently traced her fingers across the wall.

"It says, 'Friendship.'"

Claire reacted with a start and nervously jumped away from the man who walked up behind her. He was a head taller than she was and he wore a vest with an ascot. Chan recognized her fear and intercepted the man with his tail and cheeks sparking in case he needed to defend his trainer.

"You!" Claire finally recognized. "You were that weird reporter."

"That's right," he said without regard for the pokémon poised for battle. "I'm just here to see how it goes as you finish the excavation of the ruins."

"How did you know we were almost done? You haven't been around here for two weeks."

His face scrunched like a raisin. "Two weeks?" Very quickly, his expression changed to one of surprise. "Right! Two weeks _exactly_, is how long it's been since we met each other." Muttering more to himself but still audibly, he added, "Fourteen days? I must have pressed a wrong button."

Now Claire looked confused. "You don't even know what day it is, do you?"

"Tuesday?" he suggested. It was a Friday.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Professor."

"That's it?"

"What's it?"

"The Professor?"

"Isn't it enough?"

"Professor who?"

"Exactly."

Claire scoffed, starting to feel sorry for the guy. "What are you a professor of? You don't much look like a pokémon professor."

"What's wrong with the way I look?"

Making a face, she said, "Well, for one, who wears an ascot anymore?"

The Professor patted his neckband and straightened it. "Ascots are cool. And stylish. And I'm pretty much a professor of everything. Language is my strong suit." He pointed to the wall with the unown spelling out gibberish. "They're saying, 'All lives touch other lives to create something anew and alive.'" When he read the words, the eyes of each and every unown opened and began to watch the two visitors intently, curious what meaning they would take from the message.

"Wait," Claire interrupted. "You said 'friendship' a moment ago."

"That's what it says. The other part is the _definition_ of friendship."

No matter how much she stared, Claire couldn't make sense of the arrangement of unown the way the Professor could. It still spelled out gibberish to her, and she was having difficulty concentrating on it now with the unown eyes all focusing on her.

"They're speaking to you, aren't they? In some foreign language you know that I don't."

"They probably recognize me after all this time," the Professor spoke. He glanced at Claire with a look of astonishment. "That's pretty brilliant of you to figure that out."

She looked confused by something he had said when they met—that he "always wanted to see the unveiling of the Solaceon Ruins"—but she responded to his most recent comment first, as if she needed to get it out of the way while she figured out what she wanted to ask.

"Unown are psychic. They know how to make a message people can read." She took a breath and asked, "What did you mean 'they recognize you'? How long have you been here? Have you been sneaking in at night?"

"No, maybe ten minutes, and I was here to see the temple built." He made a face. "I guess I answered those questions in the wrong order. I meant to say I was here when the temple was built, I've only been here ten minutes, and no, I haven't been sneaking in at night—not with that graveler guard at the front."

"I got it the first time," she assured him. Narrowing her eyes at him with suspicion, she asked, "You say you were here when the temple was built?"

"That's right."

"Two thousand years ago?"

"That's right." Suddenly his smile faded as the Professor realized, "Oh, that's a red flag for you, isn't it?"

"Itty bitty one," she admitted, using her fingers as an indicator. "Alright, Professor. I'd love for you to tell your story to a friend of mine at the hospital, specifically in the psych ward."

"I'd rather tell you," he said, giving her a look that didn't speak to romantic intentions, but rather to intellectual equality. "You know a lot about the unown, don't you?"

"I do."

"But you don't know why they chose this temple, do you?"

Already brushing him into the corner of her mind where she filed away crazy people she planned to forget about, her competitive side kicked in and decided to humor him with logic. "How do you know it was a temple before time ruined it?"

He shrugged and looked around the room. "Just take a look. What other kind of building would have all these rooms with space to study and worship and not hold even one rest room?"

She hummed in amusement. "Okay. So what do you think the temple was used for?"

"That's easy," he scoffed. "It was built as a place of worship for Emperor Alph."

"Emperor Alph?"

"Yeah. You know him?"

"I know _of_ him," she clarified.

Of course Claire knew about him. Archaeologists discovered just a few years earlier that Alph III was the second emperor of the Ancient Kingdom before it dissolved and each of the countries regions became largely independent. The Ruins of Alph, located outside Violet City in the Johto region, carried the only written proof of Alph's reign, and current knowledge of history marked that location as the origin of written language.

"I met him," the Professor claimed. "Nice guy. Had to deal with a lot of invasions. His army was the first to start importing pokémon for war. Brilliant tactician. Terrible poker player, though. He actually tried to bluff up a pair of threes, but his tell was just too obvious to miss; his samurai would prepare to retaliate against anyone with a better hand." With a more sullen look, he added, "The man hated to lose."

"You're insane," Claire interrupted him.

"That's rude. I hear it a lot, though, so who am I kidding?" He gave her that big, toothy smile from the other day. "So what do you think? Want to go with me and see where it all began?"

Claire was chuckling now; the man was obviously a nutter with a history fetish, but he talked so fast it just amused her. "What? Go back in time to when this temple was built?"

"No, forget the temple," the Professor insisted. "It's just a worship site that a bunch of unown decided to inhabit. I mean go _all_ the way back to witness the building of the very first Temple of Alph." He looked very serious for a psych patient missing from his bed. "You'd get to meet Emperor Alph… See the Ruins of Alph before they were ruins… Maybe find out where the unown came from…"

It all sounded too perfect. Time travel? A ridiculous premise used by science fiction writers and celebi conspiracy theorists. No sane person believed in time travel. This man was well informed, but clearly a head case who spent too much time reading archaeology articles and dreaming of ancient lives. Claire wouldn't deny she'd had the same dreams before, but time travel was only possible figuratively—by excavating ancient ruins and uncovering hidden secrets of the past.

"I don't think so, _Professor_," she told him. She turned to lead him out of the ruins so she could continue her work. "Now, if you'll please leave me be, I have work to finish up."

Six steps from the exit to the room, she bumped into something she couldn't see.

The Professor winced into a pained facial expression. "Sorry. I probably shouldn't have parked it right in front of the door, should I?" Knocking himself in the head with his palm, he muttered, "I'm really off today. Must have been that poached psyduck."


	3. The Mysterious Blue Box

The Mysterious Blue Box

Claire rubbed the bump on her head, but she hardly felt the pain. Moreover, she couldn't figure out what she walked into. Chan the pachirisu bounded in front of her and squeaked repeatedly, indicating he noticed some obstacle in the way, though he was confused about it, too.

She tried reaching out, fully expecting not to touch anything because she couldn't see anything. But her fingers pressed against something purely invisible. It felt like wood, but wood was not normally invisible. Was this a trick of the unown?

"What is this?" Claire asked. Looking concerned and quite serious, she said, "This was not here when I came in this morning."

"Of course not," spoke the Professor. "I brought it in with me."

"Brought _what_ in? Is it a kecleon?" (A chameleon pokémon.)

Making a face, he replied, "A kec—No! It's my ship."

"Your ship?"

"Yeah. I can't well travel back and forth across time and space without a ship."

Right. The time travel story. She decided to humor him. "But why's it invisible?"

"Camouflage," the Professor answered with that grin. "The only part of the camouflage mechanism that still works, mind you, but it's pretty effective. Terrible drain on the batteries, though. Any chance you're interested in a quick look-see?"

Even one as skeptical as Claire had to admit there was something invisible in front of her, whether or not it was a time machine. She nodded slowly, cautiously, and answered, "Why not? I've never been inside an invisible ship before."

The Professor laughed. "Just watch." He removed from the pocket on the inside of his jacket a small, metal tube. It looked like a fat pen with a blue geode jammed in one end. And when the Professor touched the tube, the rock lit up brightly like an exploding golem, and the tube creating a low vibration that pulsed with the shimmering light.

The invisible walls of the ship flickered twice just before the wood turned solid blue. The invisible device turned out to be a big, blue box hardly big enough for two people to stand inside. Claire recognized its appearance from the history books; it was a police call box from back before cell phones and Pokégear became widespread. A black plaque on the door read:

**POLICE TELEPHONE**

FREE FOR USE OF **PUBLIC**

ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY

OFFICERS AND CARS RESPOND TO URGENT CALLS

**PULL TO OPEN**

"What in the world…?" was all Claire uttered as she took in the sight. As long as she'd studied ancient technology, she never experienced such a mix of astonishment and embarrassment. "A phone booth?" she asked incredulously. "Seriously?"

"It's no phone booth," the Professor told her, the look on his face purely sincere. "The phone in there hasn't worked for seven hundred years. I keep meaning to get it fixed, but I only ever seem to think about it when I'm visiting a timeline pre-telephone. You know how hard it is to make a landline connection when people haven't even discovered electricity yet? It becomes quite the chore to locate a proper fuse."

Claire squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to block out the ramblings of this lunatic. "Do you always ramble like that?"

"Ramble? I don't _ramble_." A mere second later, he decided, "Okay, yes, I ramble from time to time. I prefer to think of it as telling a story. There's always a good story to tell. Everybody has one, and those who don't deserve to write one." He eyed Claire with that big grin. "You look like you've got a few stories to tell. So does your parcheesi there."

A quick glance at Chan to figure his meaning and Claire remarked, "He's a pachirisu."

"That's what I said. Now come on. You want to see the inside, don't you?" He stuck a simple, regular Yale key inside the call box, disengaged the lock, and pushed the door open. Claire stood off to the side where the sign was posted, never seeing inside the box.

"Wait," she protested momentarily. She pointed to the sign right beside the door the Professor pushed on. "That right there says '_Pull_ to open.'"

The Professor nodded. "Yes, it does. I know you studied linguistics but that doesn't strike me as one of your more impressive moments."

"You _pushed_," she interrupted.

He stopped for a moment and considered her point. He stepped outside the box, closed the door, and then pushed it open again. He repeated the action three times, as if he thought that must be a fluke and contrary to his typical behavior. Finally, he realized, "Okay, yes, I did. Do you want to meet Alph or not?" He disappeared inside the box, but his echoing voice sounded, "I will warn you: He's hates to be kept waiting so if he ever invites you to dinner, you'd better be on time."

Claire couldn't help but scoff. She couldn't understand what to make of this guy. He was clearly bonkers. How skilled and witty would the guy have to be for it all to be some kind of ruse?

"Why should I trust you?" she asked. He poked his head out of the box and looked at her like he'd been insulted. Smiling at the combination of his goofy attitude and his goofy ascot, she added, "You're clearly a mad man with a box."

"Rarely has a truer statement been made," the Professor assured her with a smile. "But I can tell you are starting to believe me." He pointed inside. "You almost believe this box can transcend time and space, and you really want to know if Emperor Alph was really such a stickler for schedules."

The two stood there for a moment, just staring one another down. Every synapse in Claire's rational brain told her to run away and call the cops right then and there, but that curious side of her teamed up with her sense of humor to convince her rational side, _Calling the police is what this was built for_.

"Fine. I'll take a look," she agreed. Disproving his assertions was the only scientific way to determine his sanity. "But it's going to be cozy, and I do not forgive easily."

"Understood," the Professor said, turning to lead her inside the box. "But I think you'll be pleasantly surprised." He disappeared behind the door, as far as he could go inside a box that was nine feet squared.

Claire stepped in front of the door to see what the Professor could be doing inside. He was still talking to her—saying something about Emperor Alph's family lineage—but she didn't hear his voice as anything more than a drone. Her brain diverted all energy to understanding the breach in physical laws right in front of her.

Inside the box, the Professor walked circles around a control panel more than four times his size while he continued telling his story. The machines reached to the sky more than thirty feet over her head, and they were on the second floor. Doors spaced every six feet around the inside of this little box. She could see a library through one of them; there was a swimming pool through another. This place was like a dormitory on the inside.

But the outside was only three feet wide on all sides. She walked around the box, dragging her fingers along the wood to be sure there were no other illusions to it. She could detect none.

And yet, inside looked like a dormitory, even the second time she looked. Back and forth she looked, but her brain could not reconcile the impossibility.

The Professor was leaning in close to the big control panel in the center of the main room. It almost looked like he was talking to the machine rather than to Claire. "He was quite cross with me. And there is no quicker method of angering a prince than to introduce yourself after his decree against Western education as The Professor." He moved away from the control panel and toward the door to reconvene with Claire. "But on the plus side, ritual curses can't really kill you, though they can give you severe cramps."

Right then, he stood before Claire again, recognizing the fear behind her eyes. "Now that I've reached a convenient stopping place, tell me where you are."

Claire hesitated to speak, not really sure where to start. "It's… uh… It's bigger on the inside."

"Yes, it is."

"That's not possible."

"Then how do you explain it?"

"I can't."

The Professor smiled. "You don't have to." He walked a big circle around the control panel with his arm out to demonstrate the space. "This is a whole other kind of technology far beyond the understanding of a linguist. The universe isn't limited to three-dimensional physics. It may be easiest to understand this TARDIS as a sort of alternate dimension entered simply by walking through the doors of a call box."

Despite her confusion, Claire's brain was beginning to adapt to what her eyes and ears were telling her. Although it was a little blue box on the outside, it was clearly something else inside.

"This technology… Is it alien?"

The Professor gave a single nod. "Yes."

"How did you get it?"

"I borrowed it."

"Borrowed."

Suddenly his expression turned defensive. "Yes, _borrowed_. I borrowed it, okay?"

"Okay." Her worry was now more than half replaced by curiosity. "Does it really travel in time?"

The Professor's expression changed back to glee instantly. "That, she does." He jumped back up to the control panel and placed his hand on a lever. "All you have to do is say the word."

Claire thought about it for a moment. If this man wasn't messing with her—if he was serious about his ability to take her back in time to the era of Emperor Alph—she had the opportunity to study the ruins in a way no archaeologist ever could. This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"Will you bring me home when we're done?"

"Of course. One trip there and back. That's all I promise."

Claire couldn't surprise her excitement any longer. "Let's do it."

The Professor smiled and leaned into the lever. "Then away we go!"


	4. Step into the Past

Step into the Past

Claire wasn't prepared for how much shaking the time machine—the box called a TARDIS—endured as it began to travel. She couldn't tell if she was actually traveling through time or not, but she did know her spine was going to relocate if the rattling didn't stop soon. The grinding noise was getting to Claire, too, but she couldn't cover her ears and brace herself simultaneously.

"Is it supposed to shake like this?"

"Time turbulence," the Professor explained curtly. "Makes for a bumpy ride."

"Are you sure you didn't leave the parking brake on or something?"

The Professor didn't respond. A moment passed, and suddenly the grinding noise stopped and the turbulence went away. Claire no long felt like a school of wailmer was colliding with the box in mid-flight.

Ignoring the fact that she was right, despite having no experience inside this box, the Professor said, "Certain eras are prone to distortion. Which reminds me: Don't go interfering with the timeline. We're here to observe the construction and origins of the Temple of Alph and _nothing else!_" He waved a thought from his head as he mumbled the addition, "And possibly eat a meal fit for an emperor's guest."

"What do you mean about not interfering? Aren't we interfering just by moving through time?" She put on a puzzled look as she tried to understand all the incomplete theories of time travel she'd heard through school and television.

"Not really. You see, time has a little bit of a bumper. Certain things are going to happen whether we're here or not. By keeping below the radar, we'll be sure our effect is minimal."

"So answer this conundrum for me," Claire requested. "If we really did go back in time, and suppose we changed something big…"

"We won't. We'll stay below the radar."

"_If_… is it possible to change something so that I'm never born?"

The Professor made a face. "Why would you want to do that? Usually I have to talk people out of self-serving time changes, but that suggestion is truly depressing."

Claire sighed deeply. "I'm not trying effect that change. I would very seriously like to _avoid_ that change at all costs!"

"Good. No changes whatsoever. We don't make a scene." Almost exactly at that moment, a soft thud gave the impression of the box landing somewhere and the TARDIS engines shut down. He put on that goofy grin again. "We're here." He quickly hopped down the stairs to the front door of the box. "Shall we go take a look?"

Struck with sudden hesitance, Claire paused before joining her pilot. "What's out there?"

"I never quite know until I open those doors."

Something about the way the Professor acted really struck Claire. He seemed intelligent and skilled, but also eccentric and clueless. Was it really possible for someone to have a time machine and have only a marginal understanding of it, or was he just clowning around? She chose to follow him and find out. The front door opened to a scent of air Claire never smelled before.

"What is that?" she asked.

"Mice," the Professor answered. "Mice and rocks. Rocks, mostly. Lots of rocks around this time period. Very mountainous region. It's helpful if you're trying to build yourself a brand new temple devoted to yourself but not so helpful if you have sensitive feet." With a sigh, he added, "Take a warning from a longtime traveler. Don't take anything for granted—not even comfortable shoes."

The TARDIS was situated on top of a tall, somewhat flat cliff side. The Professor stepped out so eagerly he would have toppled straight over the cliff if he had not whipped an arm back and immediately grabbed the door of the TARDIS.

Now Claire was convinced the Professor had no idea how to operate his own time machine.

"Perhaps I can find a slightly less hazardous place to park," he suggested as he pulled the doors shut and reengaged the controls. Moments later, the TARDIS rested at the base of the cliff, only to disappear once more and reappear fifty meters _from_ the base. When Claire pointed out the importance of understanding geometry when parking near an avalanche zone, he opted for a safer distance. Now the TARDIS sat at the edge of the grasslands in the shadow of the mountain cliff.

"That's much better," the Professor suggested. Without another thought, he looked toward the southeast and said, "Now, let's go see who's here."

"Hold on," Claire objected. She looked at the TARDIS—the big, bright blue box sitting in the middle of nature—and asked, "Are you just going to leave it there?"

"You expect me to tuck her into my pocket?"

"No, but you could at least camouflage it somehow. I mean, it does kind of draw attention to itself. Why not turn it invisible again?"

"If I turn her invisible, I'll never find her again. At least not until the batteries run out, and then we'll be stuck here. She'll be fine there by herself. I locked the door on the way out."

Claire made a face. "You're telling me that a time machine with the ability to turn invisible doesn't have some kind of camouflage? What about just a tarp or a tree branch?"

"Are you mad? I don't see how a big tarp in the middle of nowhere is going to attract _less_ attention, and I'm definitely not covering the TARDIS with a tree branch. And I already told you she has a camouflage chip, but it broke ages ago. She's been a big, blue box ever since."

"Why not fix it?"

"Landlines and comfortable shoes," the Professor stated, turning away from her and beginning his journey around to the south end of the mountain. "A whole, great world outside the TARDIS. Are you coming?"

Claire knew he was right, and the reason she joined was to see if time travel was truly possible. "The TARDIS is already a whole, great world to me. Sue me for wanting to know more about it."

"Be careful who you say that to. We're in an era where all lawsuits end in death. Or else someone loses a chicken."

"Speaking of _someone_," she said, ignoring his _non sequitur_ thoughts, "how often does it usually take for you to find someone on one of these journeys?"

"Well, it depends. The TARDIS brought us to the exact site of the Temple of Alph. Of course, there seems to be a mountain here right now, so perhaps I miscalculated a bit and we arrived too early for the groundbreaking." He didn't even make it completely around the end of the mountain's base when he was grabbed by an armored man who pushed him to his knees and pressed the blade of a large knife on the back of his neck. "Or perhaps we were right on time."

Claire shrieked when she saw the blade, but also because three more armored men charged past the Professor and targeted her with Japanese swords ready to strike. Almost instinctually, she reached for her belt and dropped a pokéball. Energy poured from the open pokéball with a red light; the energy began immediately shaping itself into a roserade—a three-foot bouquet pokémon that looked like a short, green woman wearing a rose as a dress. The roserade whipped her frond cape around her chest and poised her hands—two rose bouquets—to protect her trainer.

"Nice choice," she muttered to herself. "A flower pokémon against a bunch of swords. No way _this_ can end badly." But the roserade didn't back down. She swung her arms forward, one after the other, and flung razor-sharp leaves at the men dressed as samurai, who deftly deflected the leaves with their blades, yet resisted furthering their attack. They now kept their distance. She surmised the warriors weren't too interested in tangling with a well trained pokémon.

"Let him go," she tried, referring to the captive Professor.

"Really? You're going to use a big flower to threaten men with swords?"

Her concern faded rapidly. "I could just leave you there, you know."

Suddenly a look of realization crossed his face that she was right.

"Professor?"

The professor couldn't easily turn his head to see who was calling him, but Claire thought he might have recognized the voice.

"Alph?" The blade on the back of his neck pressed harder as the warrior holding the Professor responded poorly to his disrespect. "Ahh! I meant to say, Emperor Alph?"

Claire caught sight of the man who spoke from behind the armed warriors. He wore purple, silk robes that were loose in the torso but wide enough in the arms for ten men to fit. His pants were equally loose, almost like a giant skirt. And he was definitely aged—maybe sixty. When he moved, everyone kept their distance to avoid accidentally touching him, but they all stayed close enough to leap to his protection as needed.

Himself unarmed, the man certainly looked the part of royalty. As he approached the Professor, Claire didn't get the impression he intended harm; after all, the Professor was pretty well detained. The man simply leaned in to look at him more closely and carefully, the same way one might look at a three-dimensional puzzle.

"It really is you," the elegant man spoke with surprise.

"Hello, Emperor," the Professor said with a short little wave of the fingers—enough to signal friendliness without causing his captor to react violently.

"But it's been thirty years since I saw you last, yet you haven't aged a day."

"Thirty years, thirty years," the Professor chanted to himself. "Ah, yes, of course. Well, I just happen to have one of those young-looking faces. I don't suppose you might consider letting me stand up on my own power, preferably without a sword pinned to my neck."

With a nod and a soft chuckle, the old man said, "Yes, perhaps I could." He motioned to the samurai, who immediately grunted affirmatively and stepped away from the Professor, assuming the same battle-ready stance as the other bodyguards.

"Much better," the Professor said as he stretched his back and rubbed his neck. He gave the old man a big smile. "Now. It's great to see you again, Emperor. Sorry I was gone for so long." He extended his hand and immediately pulled it back when six swords flashed in front of him and threatened his fingers. "Right. No touchies. Got it."

Emperor Alph waved his hand downward and his guards sheathed their swords once more, still ready to strike again if needed. He bowed lightly to the Professor, who returned the gesture.

"You are looking well," the Professor told him.

"You are a terrific liar," Alph replied. "Have you come to spoil the unveiling of my temple?"

"To spoil it? Heavens, no. I'm here to witness it. How could I miss such an auspicious event as the celebration of the greatest emperor the country has ever seen?"

"Perhaps this way I may truly live forever."

"Oh, stop it. You've got years of strong leadership ahead of you. You are young yet."

Alph held his smile consistent and gave a humble nod. "Your lying is worse this time." That prompted a return smile from the Professor. "Forgive my forthrightness, but please introduce me to your foreign companion." Claire might not have felt so ignored if the Professor didn't have to follow the Emperor's gaze before he remembered she was there.

"Of course. Pardon my rudeness." The Professor walked right past the three samurai and moved to pat the roserade on the head; the pokémon recoiled before any direct contact was made.

"How does he know I'm foreign?" she asked the Professor.

"You've summoned a pokémon from the Sinnoh region. He's never seen one before. I don't suppose you could provide yourself a lower profile and call only a pokémon from the Johto region?" He looked hopeful as he made the request.

She tried to think about the timeline. If they really went back in time by sixteen hundred years, then people in the Johto region wouldn't know about the Sinnoh region for another ten years, give or take, when the empire expanded to the east under the rule of Alph IV. The only pokémon these people were currently accustomed to seeing were from the Johto and Kanto regions; that meant using only her sudowoodo while she was here.

Claire recalled Croft—the roserade—and placed the pokéball on her belt. "Fine. I can't believe I'm wearing blue jeans and flannel and you think my pokémon are what draw attention to me."

"You look fine," he told her. Making a face that conveyed little, if any confidence, he added, "Don't be surprised if they accuse you of being underdressed, though. Luckily, the emperor loves the ascot." He grinned widely when he spoke.

"You look ridiculous," she asserted.

"Right. So let me introduce you to Emperor Usimare Alph III."


	5. Before They Were Ruins

Before They Were Ruins

Claire was tempted to offer her hand to Alph, but she saw what happened when the Professor tried it and had no desire to experience it herself. She simply gave a short bow and returned his greeting.

"I must thank you, Professor, for bringing a colorful woman to my temple for the grand unveiling. Will she be joining my harem?"

That was the moment Claire felt true exasperation for the first time in her life. Not only did she find the word "colorful" to be offensive and potentially racist, she couldn't believe even an emperor would be so recklessly and bluntly forward with her so soon after introduction.

"Um, actually," the Professor spoke as he bounded to Claire's side and took her arm in his. "I intend as little offense as you and your armed guards will possibly interpret, but I was hoping you wouldn't mind if I keep her." He gave a hopeful look that was almost child-like in its appearance.

With a soft chuckle, Alph spoke, "Of course, Professor. I am happy for you to have selected a wife. Now both of you come and witness my grand legacy." To his guards he spoke, "The Professor and I go way back. Treat them as my guests." At his request, the guards abandoned their thoughts of the Professor as a potential threat and sheathed their weapons completely, rejoining their ranks around the emperor and his entourage.

Claire yanked her arm back. "_Keep_ me?"

Defensively, he asked, "What did you want me to say? Remember the era we're in now. Women don't have personal rights. They are all considered to be the property of the men in their lives. He probably assumes you only have any pokémon in order to aid in my protection."

"Oh, really?" she asked sarcastically. "And why would he think you need additional protection?"

The Professor looked past her as if looking straight into the past. "Let's just say I have a history of getting in over my head."

"That, I believe." And she enjoyed hearing it so much that forgave the doctor and walked beside him closely, allowing him to pretend she was his property so long as he didn't overdo it. "Let's go, 'honey.'"

"Right-o, dearie."

The temple was very tall and had two levels. (Claire was amused to hear that Alph wanted only a two-tiered building to avoid being overly extravagant.) The roof was distinctly sloped and created a canopy for the ground within two meters of the base. The roof tiles were navy blue and provided a nice color scheme with the off-yellow walls. The bottom tier occupied almost the entire afternoon mountain shadow, but the second tier looked like a small storage shed placed in the center of the roof capped by a high-reaching spire.

"What's with all the rhydons?" Claire asked upon entering. Filing in the center halls of the temple were obsidian statues of bipedal pokémon with drill-like horns upon their mighty snouts. She knew of the rhydon statues from her studies, but scholars never determined the significance. This was the best chance an archaeologist could ask for to obtain answers.

"It is not the business of a concubine to question the emperor," spoke one of the women in the entourage. At first glance, Claire thought she was a concubine, but her robes were more magnificent than those worn by the other women: silk instead of cotton, and red to make her stand out. Claire decided this woman was a wife instead.

"The rhydon represents the strength of the emperor," spoke one of the teenage boys. He was Claire's height, though adorned in red robes similar to Alph's and wearing a slight scowl upon his face. "It is a pokémon of true strength and vigor, with the power to end battles in a single strike, just as the emperor himself is capable."

The legends of Alph III's strength in war were familiar stories to Claire. Allegedly he ended a war against the Northern Horde within a day. Given the emperor's reputation for establishing pokémon as instruments of war and initiating the idea of the battle, she now concluded that the Northern Horde was likely defeated by an army of rhydon, immortally represented within the walls of this temple.

"That is fascinating," Claire said. She took a small notebook from her shirt pocket and a pen from her pants and began to scribble notes. Everything she learned here, she wanted to take back home with her. "And what about the hidden rooms? Why were they constructed?"

"I can assure you there are no hidden rooms in this temple," spoke another of the young men. This one was taller, older, and wore purple robes. He spoke with wisdom and amusement in his voice, lacking any nuance of offense. Though Claire clearly originated of another culture, this boy was not bothered by her forthrightness nor by her curiosity. Claire sized him up instantly as the emperor's son.

Alph explained, "This is simply a place of worship, to honor my contributions to this region long after I am gone. My legacy does not necessitate anything more complicated than that."

"We've separated the temple into five rooms," the son explained, "divided by specific purpose. But the rooms are not sealed, nor do they even lock. At no time should worship of my venerable father be restricted."

Claire looked confused now. Though she didn't excavate the Ruins of Alph, she did study it and she distinctly remembered hidden rooms. Then again, the temple was bigger than she remembered. Maybe the rooms weren't really hidden but were cordoned off after construction. But why?

"Allow me to introduce the emperor's son," the Professor said. He motioned between Claire and the son for a moment before realizing, "I'm sorry. We haven't met, either."

"I am Jomon," the boy spoke with a nod. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Professor. My father has spoken highly of you. And it is an even greater pleasure to meet you…"

"Claire. I'm honored to be here."

"It is wonderful to have you here."

"Jomon," Alph called as he turned around. "Do not dishonor the Professor by trying to seduce his wife from him."

Jomon bowed deeply and apologetically. "My deepest apologies, Father."

Confused again, Claire leaned over to the Professor and whispered inquisitively, "How was he trying to seduce me?"

The Professor answered, "It's an incredibly conservative culture."

"So if I made a dirty joke…"

"You'd be sentenced to death."

She cringed. "That's a bit of an overreaction."

"Women's rights are ages away."

At that moment, Emperor Alph turned to face the group. "Penta." The boy in red stood and bowed. "Please escort everyone back to the Violet Palace."

"Yes, Father," Penta replied diligently. He turned and began to usher everyone out the doors.

"Jomon, stay with me," Alph spoke. "We will meditate on the completion of this temple."

"Yes, Father." Giving a big, friendly smile, Jomon said to Claire, "I do hope you and the Professor will stay the night at the Violet Palace. I would like to meet you."

"Of course we will stay," the Professor said excitedly. "The meals prepared with the bellflowers of Violet City are simply delectable. Claire, they may even make you go vegetarian." He raised his eyebrows excitedly, accenting his toothy grin.

"I can't wait."

Jomon gave another nod and returned to his father's side while Claire and the Professor followed the small group heading back toward ancient Violet City.

"That's it?" she asked him. "I was hoping to spend a little more time here learning about the temple's origins. Do you understand how significant it is to be here before the temple fell to ruins?"

"Don't worry. We'll stay the night, hobnob with the locals, and then sneak back here first thing in the morning. You'll have the temple to yourself for a short while, then we'll just hop in the TARDIS and you'll be on your way back home to incorporate your new knowledge with the ruins you just uncovered in Solaceon."

Claire scoffed. The idea of hobnobbing with the locals was something Belle would encourage her to do. She had little practice in social settings with people of her own time period; she worried that being fifteen hundred years in the past would be similar to socializing with people from another planet.

"How am I supposed to hobnob with the locals? Social hour isn't my thing."

"Well, you have lots of questions. What better way to get answers than from the horse's mouth?"

His point was very well received. Claire was in a prime position to answer all the questions about this era that plagued modern paleontologists and anthropologists. Like the Professor said, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. And she'd be able to combine the boring necessity of eating with academic inquiry. Why not take advantage?


	6. Dinner in the Violet Palace

Dinner in the Violet Palace

The Violet Palace lived up to its name. Arranged as a complement of several smaller buildings around a raised keep, the palace was a tiered building much like the Temple of Alph was: a series of one block built on top of a bigger block. Each area of exposed roof on the four tiers, as well as the tops of the adjoining buildings, was marked by a roof of a brilliant shade of purple that simply shimmered in the dusk light and reflected warmth across the burgeoning city.

And the Professor didn't exaggerate the food's worth. Claire was never a big fan of spinach, but even though the salad made from the bellflower leaves tasted very similar to the more common vegetable, it had an extra zest to it. She couldn't get her fill; not until her conversation got interesting. Seated at the table in the banquet hall next to Penta, the emperor's younger son, she bent his ear in all directions regarding the culture of the kingdom. She observed his body language as he spoke every response, she listened to his nuances, and she probed about everything her inquisitive mind could think of.

"You are curious for a woman," Penta told her, his expression a mix of amusement and disdain.

"I want to know it all," she admitted. "Forgive me if I'm being too pushy. Tell me more about being the country's prince."

Penta fidgeted uncomfortably and replied, "I'm hardly a prince. My brother is the true prince of the country. He is the one set to become emperor."

He was quickly interrupted by a woman who leaned over and scolded Claire with, "You're being too pushy." The woman Tia had a scowl on her face ever since Claire met her. The emperor put that scowl on her face by giving her a son _after_ his first wife already had one; having the younger son meant this wife would never rise to the position of Empress. She was still lavished with royal treatment and given the emperor's attentions on a regular basis, but she would never be his top priority.

"I'm sorry. I intended no offense. I only want knowledge."

Tia frowned and said, "Women are meant to be seen, not heard. Do not speak anymore in the presence of royalty. You are lucky not to be punished for it already."

"Society will catch up to me one day," Claire replied.

But Tia's words left her suddenly with a distressing thought. She turned to the Professor, who was singing a terrible mockery of a jigglypuff into a bellflower in order to amuse the emperor's eight-year-old daughter.

"The acoustics of that bellflower make you sound like a meowth with its tail being pulled," she reviewed his performance.

With a giggle, the princess reviewed it differently. "He's funny."

"See?" the Professor asked. "I'm the funny one."

"No argument here. Just look at that ascot. Why does everyone speak English?"

"Don't insult the ascot. It won't be long before they make a fashion comeback."

"I don't care how many times you have traveled to the future, I will never believe that ascots are making a comeback."

He looked defeated. "I can't seem to convince anyone else, either, but I still hold hope."

Ignoring his pipe dream, she repeated her query: "Why does everyone here speak English? Shouldn't they all be speaking Japanese?"

"Well, that is certainly a valid question," he replied. "It has to do with your sudden connection with the Time Vortex." When she gave a blank stare, he realized, "Of course, that means nothing to you. You see, the TARDIS translation circuits automatically translate everything you see and hear into a language you understand; of course, it does the same for the people listening to you. You're actually speaking Japanese right now."

"Are you serious?"

"When have I ever not been serious?"

She simply stared back.

Understanding, he admitted, "Right. Probably best not to answer that."

"So what would happen if I spoke Japanese to them?"

"You speak Japanese?"

Stunned again, she reminded him, "I have a doctorate in linguistics and ancient languages."

"So is that a 'yes'?"

After rolling her eyes, Claire looked past him to the princess. "Sumimasen, hime-sama. Ogenki desuka?"

The princess giggled, "That sounds funny."

"That's code for 'gibberish,'" the Professor translated. "That didn't sound like any language. Don't worry about the language thing. I'm telling you, the TARDIS handles all of that for you."

"How?" Claire wondered. "The translation circuit doesn't affect me directly. There's no chip implanted in my brain. It doesn't make sense for everything to translate automatically. Biologically, nothing's changed in me."

"That's not technically true," the Professor argued. "Simply being in the TARDIS exposes you to time particles."

"Time particles? That's what they're called?"

"You prefer time _cooties_? Whatever you want to call them, being inside the TARDIS alters your biology in the grand scheme of time. You have a much closer connection to the time vortex than the average person does."

Claire sat back in her seat and looked a bit cross. "You know, this food is great and speaking with ancient royalty has been fun, but when are we going to delve into the ruins? I mean the temple. You know that. When are we going?"

"Come now. Patience is a virtue, is it not?" He motioned at the walls of the palace. "Enjoy the hospitality here. This is one of history's most beautiful palaces for the next few decades. The social atmosphere is—"

"Stifling," Claire interrupted.

"Ah, ha. So you reveal your true weakness. You don't much appreciate social settings, do you?"

"You sound like Belle."

"I hope you're referring to my singing voice."

"Hardly," she scoffed. "She always tells me to be more social but the fact is, there's nothing wrong with being studious, and studying is not a team sport. I can't acquire all the knowledge of the ancient world and build a rollicking social life."

"Sure. Knowledge is more important than friendship. Information can't let you down."

She looked back at him as if he were a mountain guru. "Exactly." He spoke like a man who experienced many similar life decisions.

The Professor forced a smile. "My screwdriver also serves as a flashlight. Maybe we don't have to wait for morning after all."

The Temple of Alph was quiet at night. Though guarded on three sides by the emperor's samurai and by a mountain on the fourth, no sound could be heard through the dull of night save the distant cries of a hoothoot hot on the trail of its evening meal.

Denyen, a young samurai with dreams of serving the emperor directly, stood outside the front of the temple with his sword at the ready, watching the environment carefully. Each time a rattata or a hoothoot passed by, he wondered about being able to control nature the way the emperor and his top generals did. He glanced at the rhyhorn—a rhinoceros pokémon with a rocky exterior—grazing in the field just to the east and wished that rhyhorn would respond in kind to his commands.

"Pokémon are fascinating creatures, aren't they?" Denyen looked into the eyes of Harris, his superior. His armor gave him size, but his mask gave him intimidation. But at this moment, his face appeared soft and gentle. Harris removed his mask at night when not in the presence of royalty.

"I was just wondering what it might be like to control them like the emperor does."

Harris smiled. "The Emperor is a god with powers we mere mortals can never have. It is best not to yearn for something which will never be yours. Simply enjoy the fact that the rhyhorn is an ally and not an opponent." When he considered that view, Denyen accepted his weakness in this regard.

A light, crackling sound came from inside the temple. Denyen stood and instinctively placed his hand on his sword. Harris was just as quick to stand tall and replace his mask, giving him a visage of a fierce rhyhorn.

"Did you hear something?"

"Yes."

A second crackling prompted Harris to signal all other guards to form ranks. Moving in three lines, the nine samurai filed into the temple and divided in three directions to investigate. Two ranks covered the hallway, divided by a line of rhydon statues, while the third rank maintained visual watch over the front of the temple including the surrounding grounds.

Denyen was in the second rank.

The hall was nearly pitch black. What little light there was trickled in from the windows high above the floor. Both ranks held positions for a moment while they awaited a second noise. On cue, another crackling sound signaled Harris to move both ranks through the ten-foot-high door into the second hallway. Heading back toward the opposite wall amidst another line of rhydon statues, Denyen attempted to view all corners of the darkness simultaneously. His eyes could perceive very little apart from the vague shadows of his unit.

At the end of the second hallway, the shadows were too heavy to see farther in, but the crackling sound occurred once more—louder this time. This time, the sound was accompanied by a soft, purple flash of light. Denyen wondered what could create that light so deep inside of darkness. He followed Harris's command to move through the next hallway and search systematically for the source of the sound.

The first team continued to search the third hallway, but the second team stopped at the stairway leading to the meditation room on the second floor. Denyen waited in silence and listened to the pitter-patter of samurai feet moving down the hall. He listened intently for the crackle, but this time, he heard nothing.

But he felt something in the air.

"Flare," he requested softly from the soldier leading his rank.

"You see something?"

Denyen deftly retrieved the flare and held it up, listening before determining when to light it. This time, his cohort also felt the air shift—like something was watching them. Denyen quickly ignited the flare, and promptly dropped it.

What he saw was approximately fifty centimeters tall and levitating more than a meter above the floor. Unidentifiable and unknown to Denyen, the creature had one massive, open eye staring him in the face when he lit the flare. It gave a soft cry when he saw it. With the light extinguished, Denyen drew his sword and prepared to strike if the creature tried anything.

"What was that?" another man asked harshly.

The animal cry repeated, but Denyen's head throbbed at the sound, as if it came directly from inside his head.

"Keep low! Light another flare!"

A second flare lit in an effort to locate the one-eyed creature, but it proved difficult. The light revealed creatures of variable shapes and sizes, each with one massive, unblinking eye staring back into the masked faces of the samurai. There must have been dozens of them, enough to blot out the ceiling.

"Oh, my."


	7. The Unown Pokémon

The Unown Pokémon

As the pair headed south out of the city and toward the Temple of Alph, Claire commented, "If you take me back home to the exact moment we left, does that mean I'll always be a day older than the calendar says I am?"

The Professor put on a confused look. "You mean to ask if your body is still aging even as you travel through time?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean."

"Well, it's possible the time vortex may have some effect on your aging. Of course, you'd have to be exposed to it for an extended period of time, probably require years.

She stared at him for a moment, waiting specifically for him to look back at her and recognize the look of annoyance on her face. "So the answer is, 'yes, biologically, I'll always be a day older.'"

He shrugged uncomfortably. "Sure, I suppose that's the answer you're looking for."

Shaking her head, she added, "This trip is going to be weird for my sleeping schedule."

"How do you mean?" asked the Professor.

"Well, when we left, it was morning in Solaceon City. When we got here, it was already evening. I skipped seven hours in the day. I'm going to end up sleeping during the day like a vampire."

"Vampires don't really sleep during the day. They can actually move around as they please for the most part." Claire recognized another tangent when he excitedly pointed nowhere the way old men do when they get excited about a story. "Vampires, as the people here call them, are actually from a planet named Saturnyne and they are actually aquatic beings. Interestingly, they were perception filters which are how they escape leaving behind a reflection in mirrors."

Claire interrupted him with, "Are we likely to see any vampires here?"

"Um, my guess is 'no.' But I may have been wrong once or twice before." He pulled out his fat pen with the blue geode again. When he activated it and pointed it in the direction of the Temple, it emitted another series of vibrations.

"What is that thing?" Claire asked, recognizing it from before.

"It's a sonic screwdriver."

She held up her hands. "You're using a screwdriver?" But she knew better than to compare it with any old flathead. "What kind of technology is that? I saw you use it to light up the TARDIS back in Solaceon. Is it a remote control?"

"Remote control of some electronic devices is just one of its uses." The Professor stopped scanning and pulled the screwdriver back to view it closely. "It can also scan for alien life. And good news! No one from Saturnyne in the area." He took a second look at it. "But there is _something_ else here that shouldn't be—something that wasn't here before."

"Well, is it something bad?"

When the Professor took off running toward the temple, she decided, "I guess it's bad." She dropped a pokéball from her waist and watched the red light reshape into the man-sized body of her flygon. "Sounds like we might need some protection here, Indy. You ready?" The flygon gave a reassuring grunt and allowed Claire to climb onto his back as he followed the Professor.

"What are you doing?" the Professor asked with exasperation. "I told you: Johto region only. Flygon is from Hoenn!"

Honestly, Claire forgot in the heat of the moment. But, "What does it matter? They'll start migrating soon enough."

"But we can't interfere with the time stream. Introducing them to new pokémon might threaten the fabric of time!"

"Or maybe seeing an unknown pokémon in use by a mysterious visitor is what prompts the empire to begin expanding."

The Professor looked up to consider that idea. After a moment of appearing thoughtful, he suggested, "You know, I didn't think of that. Hmm!" As if snapping instantly from one thought to the previous, he suddenly dashed inside the temple with Claire and Indy close in tow. The temple was dark, but the flashing moonlight off three swords was more than Indy appreciated as he dove in front of Claire and deflected the samurai weapons.

"Hold back, gentlemen," the Professor yelled to them. "It's just me, the Professor. I'm friends with your emperor. Remember?" He looked at the three and saw the way they retreated a step; they also lowered their weapons in reverence. "Ah, so you _do_ recognize me."

But then one whispered, "She commands the creature."

"The creature?" He looked down at the rumbling pokémon eager to defend Claire if anyone tried to attack her again. "Of course. They still think only royalty can influence pokémon. Or else you're a demon."

"Depends on what they plan to do with those swords."

The Professor nodded sarcastically at that dry joke. "Right. We should get inside." He looked back to the guards. "Are you three the only ones here?"

All three shook their heads. "There are two more squads inside."

Immediately the Professor pushed past them and charged inside the temple. Claire wasn't sure whether to follow at first, but she was getting attached to the idea that she should stick with the guy who had the keys to get back home. The temple was dark inside, but she remembered what the room looked like before; she simply hugged the wall to avoid walking into a rhydon statue while she followed the Professor and his flashlight screwdriver.

"Something's not right here," he mumbled quietly. He swiped the screwdriver through the air again and then read the shaft. "I'm getting Griseous Particles, but where did they come from? That would suggest that something came here from another dimension."

"Is it something dangerous?"

"It kinda depends on the threat," he answered vaguely. "If the interdimensional traveler feels threatened, it could be disastrous. Griseous Particles correspond to a dimension where pokémon with godlike levels of power dwell. But why are they here?"

"Any chance they're unown pokémon?"

"Until I actually see them, of course they're unknown, but you actually meant _unown_, the colloquial name given to _Symbolum abecedarium_. Yes, that makes more sense." He spoke so quickly Claire didn't have the opportunity to include herself in the conversation. She was starting to realize his brain was one of those moving at such speeds as to take in the meanings behind the words a little more slowly than the actual words.

Thinking the intruders were unown helped Claire calm down instantly. She wondered for a moment what threat the unown could possibly bring if all they do is create cryptic messages and float around. But the samurai didn't know that. Maybe a single unown wouldn't affect them much. On the other hand, considering how quickly they saw this harmless, skinny man wearing an ascot as a threat, a swarm of unown might give them heart attacks.

Claire moved forward with Indy a few steps ahead, and that's when she saw a stream of unown fly out of the next hall. They moved through the air with a lackadaisical energy until they saw Indy. Judging from the way they formed a circle around the flygon and cycled with great excitement, Indy was the first pokémon they encountered in this dimension. Claire didn't feel threatened in any way, but she did feel the need to drop a second pokéball in order to provide a little more light to the hall.

As soon as her white squirrel appeared from the red light, she said, "Chan, use some of your Flash energy, will you? But don't blind me." The pachirisu chattered and scrambled up her pant leg until he rested on her shoulder. Once comfortable, his cheeks began sparking and produced a directed shine to illuminate the area. That caught the unown's attention; now they began to float in circles around Claire.

"Be still, Miss Claire," called one of the samurai. "I will rescue you."

"No, you won't. You'll stay right there and drop your sword," she demanded. Denyen didn't drop his sword, but he did shockingly lower his blade and relax slightly. Claire wasn't in danger and her face showed that perfectly. "They're just pokémon."

"_Just_ pokémon?" Denyen repeated. "They are wild, dangerous creatures."

"Not all animals are dangerous," she argued. She shrugged her left shoulder to draw attention to Chan, who responded by nuzzling Claire's cheek. "You think he's a threat to me? You've got to learn to see pokémon as friends—not just as tools of war."

"Where'd you come from?" the Professor asked one of the unown. This one looked resembled the letter A with one, triangular eye between its connecting legs. It was always an odd thought for Claire to think of unown as being alive. Spending as much time as they did plastered to walls of ancient ruins, biologists speculated that unown fed off of mosses and various bacteria found in mountain dusts, but no one really knew how they did it or if they even ate at all.

The Professor listened to the soft cry produced by the unown and then said, "How'd you get here?" He listened to another cry and asked, "How long ago?"

"You can understand them?" Claire asked incredulously.

"I speak everything," he muttered to her while listening to the unown. The unown stopped and looked at Claire as if to offer her a chance to speak to the Professor instead. "She didn't mean to interrupt. Finish your story." The unown spoke again while facing Claire, prompting the Professor to insist, "Come now. Even Canadians aren't that polite. Finish your story and I'll talk to her after."

Claire could only guess what the unown was saying, but it sounded like the pokémon was trying to avoid being in the middle of a conversation and offered to give her the Professor's attention. She wished more men were like that.

"You said a rift appeared in your dimension. The rift appeared _how long_ ago?" The Professor listened to the answer, and though she couldn't understand the conversation, Claire could read the sudden look of shock and guilt that crept over the Professor's face. "Oops."

"Oops?" she repeated curiously. "What do you mean by 'oops'?"

"I mean… we may be responsible for the unown's appearance in this dimension."

"How?"

"Well, let's just pretend that the TARDIS, in its effort to cross the time stream and transport through space simultaneously, bumped into the time stream of an alternate dimension. If it picked up a collection of Griseous Particles by accident, then maybe those particles broke open a sort of wormhole into the dimension they came from, connecting the two dimensions for any being with the right sort of size and biology to slip through the streams."

Claire was able to follow the argument, but it didn't make it easier for her to comprehend it. "So tell me if I'm misunderstanding anything here. I entered the TARDIS with you in order to travel back in time and find out the secret of the Ruins of Alph and how the unown are related to them, and in doing so, I accidentally create a wormhole for the unown—which would have been restricted from entering our dimension if we had not taken the trip."

"I see no flaw in your understanding."

"Uh huh." In other words, the very fact that Claire went back in time to find the answer to an age-old question is what caused the question to get asked in the first place. "I was tempted into time travel by something that I ended up causing by time traveling… That's quite the paradox."

"Bootstrap," the Professor said.

"Pardon?"

"The Bootstrap Paradox is the idea that something is never actually created, but rather travels in time and becomes its own reason for time travel. It's a very complicated conundrum and it's best you not think on it else you might fry your brain. Stick to archaeology and leave the quantum physics to me.

"Now, I think that just about concludes our trip." He smiled that goofy grin and started to walk away.

"Hold it," Claire demanded. "That most certainly is _not_ the end of our trip."

"Come again?"

With a scoff, she explained, "I came back here to get answers about the building and we have spent no time examining it. We can't leave yet."

"What else is there to know?"

"How about the human connection to this temple? Is it a religious sight? How do the people here respond to the appearance of the unown? Why do the unown sit back and take up residence? That's not to mention the architecture. This is the only opportunity I'll have to see the Ruins as they were built—before time eroded them into ruins."

The Professor looked at his arm. "I guess we could spare another day or so."

"You aren't wearing a watch."

Doing that fast talking thing again, he said, "Fair point. But if you're going to spend a day studying the sheer cinderblocks and mortar of the grand Temple of Alph III, then I'm going to have to find something to occupy my time." He pointed to the A-shaped unown and asked it, "Any ideas?" The unown's cry made him recoil defensively. "It's an ascot. It's _cool_. What do you know?" He walked past the unown and pointed to Denyen. "Maybe you can teach me how to be a samurai. I've always wished I were strong and honorable and manly."

"I don't understand what's going on," Denyen uttered.

"I know the feeling," the Professor replied. "I don't know why I keep bringing women with me. They can be so headstrong and asocial."

"Look who's talking."

"What's that supposed to mean?" The Professor looked hurt by her comment.

"You haven't once asked me for my name."

"I don't need to ask. You're Claire, world-famous archaeologist who uncovered the Solaceon Ruins. Everyone who knows archaeology knows you."

Claire suddenly looked a bit flustered. "Really? Everyone knows me?"

"Of course."

Shaking herself of the flattery, she said, "Great. That's not the important part. My point is, despite all your alleged travel back and forth through time, you weren't interested in me as an archaeologist. You didn't show any level of excitement to meet me, and you never asked my name."

"I told you…"

"I think," she interrupted him again, "that you only invited me because you knew I'd say yes. After all, who can resist the idea of real time travel?"

"How does wanting you around play into your sudden theory that I'm not social?"

She smiled a cocky smile at him. "It isn't the social interaction you want. You just want an audience. That's also why you like it in the palace. That's why you'd prefer it if I didn't have my own questions about this temple. You want me just to follow you around like some awestruck floozy."

"That's just mean," the Professor replied. He crossed his arms and bumped shoulders with Denyen. "Just to prove you wrong, I'll stay with Mr. Scary Face Samurai Man and his pointy sword and spend time doing nothing other than relaxing and enjoying the city."

"Good for you," Claire said with her smug little smile. "I'm going to the palace to grab some supplies and maybe a very short nap and then I'll be back." She turned and took Chan's light with her as she hopped on Indy's back and darted back through the temple.

The Professor looked to Denyen's sword and asked, "Can I try that out?"

Concerned about resisting a request from the Emperor's guest but also worried about offering a sharp implement to someone untrained in its use, Denyen stammered, "I'm… I don't… That's probably not a good idea."

The Professor sighed. "Yeah. Grandest city in the region's history and it's totally boring." He walked away from the samurai muttering, "Maybe I'll find _something_ exciting to do."

Late as it was, Emperor Alph found himself sleeping less in his old age. Some attributed it to his divine selection as king of the land, but others attributed it to his regular periods of meditation. Deep in the night, he sat in his private room, resting his body with his mind in a purely meditative state.

"Humblest apologies, Lord Emperor," spoke a male servant from the hall. He kept his head to the floor the entire time, awaiting a response before he spoke again. For an entire minute, he heard nothing from inside the small room. "I have a message from the Lady Empress." He waited for another minute with no response. He tried repeating, "Humblest apologies, Lord Emperor."

"Is something wrong?"

The servant caught only a fleeting glance of the elder prince Jomon before practically slamming his forehead back on the floor. "Excuse me, Lord Prince. Your mother has requested the Lord Emperor's presence."

"Of course." He rapped lightly on the door. "Father?"

Though the lack of response was suspicious, Jomon was taken by the smell emanating from the room. "I'll get him for you."

"Forgive me, Highness."

Jomon slid open the door to his father's meditation room and knew immediately there was a problem. His father wasn't seated in a meditation position; his legs resembled the lotus position, but his torso was slumped sideways with his head touching the floor and his neck on the verge of snapping. The smell of human waste threatened to overpower Jomon's stomach as he neared.

The battlefield taught Jomon the moment a human body relaxes to the point that everything inside leaks out:

Emperor Alph was dead.


	8. Investigation of the Court

Investigation of the Court

The halls were practically empty by the time Claire and the Professor returned to the Violet Palace. They hung it up for the night and tried to get comfortable on their bedless floors. Claire passed out in no time, suggesting to the Professor that she could really use a trip that focuses on relaxation and full nights of sleep. That thought carried him to sleep, and it carried him into the morning when he awoke to find Claire was already gone to study the temple.

"The early bird gets the worm, I suppose," he commented to himself. "Although in her case, it's probably more likely the early bird dies young from sleep deprivation. Oh well!" He slapped the floor and pushed himself to his feet. He straightened his ascot and said to no one, "Let's go see what's happening in Violet City today."

As he passed by a particularly statuesque, stone door, he suddenly stopped himself and backtracked a few steps to examine the door more closely. The door included a beautiful sculpture of a woman dressed in decorative robes and appearing subservient. But something about the room called out to the Professor. He tried pushing on the door, but it would not budge.

"Locked, eh? Well, I do love a challenge."

Revealing his sonic screwdriver from his pocket, he pointed the geode at the wall and swiped it downward, drawing the light across the door's frame. Instantly, the door began to slide backward.

"I take it back. That wasn't much of a challenge at all."

Then his sonic screwdriver caught his attention. The sensor incidentally picked up something while it was active. The results of the scan were inconclusive, but something was out of place. He was right about there being something behind this wall.

But he was not fully prepared for what he found.

The room was filled with more than a dozen women, fully clothed in elegant silks like those worn by traditional geishas, and every one drop-dead gorgeous if not for the look of fear and confusion that contorted their faces. Clearly, he did not belong here.

"A harem? In Violet City? I never expected that."

Suddenly, a woman much less attractive in the face and dressed more like a twentieth-century bouncer approached the Professor and declared, "You have desecrated an inviolable space. Leave immediately or you will be put to death." The woman's name was Ariel, and she was tasked with supervising the Emperor's concubines.

But the Professor couldn't hear what Ariel said to him. He walked right past her with his eyes stuck on one thing, and it wasn't any of the women who scrambled away from him. In the center of the decadent room rested a fountain. The fountain was nothing special, but the sculpture on the central pedestal was hard to believe. It was shaped a bit like a mollusk with a helical shell and a dozen tentacles positioned out front. The water sprayed from under the tentacles at high speed, bounced up, and then fell back into the pool behind the sculpture.

"Is that an omanyte?" the Professor asked, partly to Ariel and partly just to himself.

"It is a pokémon. Now please leave."

"A pokémon," he repeated. "An extinct one that isn't supposed to have existed here for millions of years…" He leaned in closer and watched the way the water bounced off the tentacles—almost like they were covered in some biological oil that helped repel the water straight into the air. It seemed unusual for a stone-carved fountain.

"Are you certain that's a statue?"

"Get out!"

With a bit of pushiness and twisting his arm sharply at the elbow, Ariel managed to muscle the Professor out of the harem and shove the door shut behind him, locking and sealing it.

"That hurt a bit," the Professor admitted aloud to no one while vastly understating the pain in his arm. He acted as if ignoring the pain made it go away faster. Silly as that notion may be, he was able to ignore the pain when he thought about that omanyte.

"That's now two pokémon at the center of time-space anomalies within twenty-four hours of one another. There's clearly a reason I was brought here. I just need to figure out what it is."

He figured he'd start the day with a visit to the Emperor. He started through the building and noticed the halls were basically empty even at this hour. Physically, people were still wandering around completing their daily tasks like they always did, but emotionally, they were all someplace else. The Professor received hardly any acknowledgement at all from them. Something upset each and every servant in the palace. And he learned what it was when he reached the throne room.

The entire royal court gathered in the throne room, all wearing dark clothes and sullen expressions. All heads angled downward toward the ground in a show of grievance.

"What's with the distraught faces?" the Professor asked cheerfully. In an effort to bring everyone out of their apparent slumps, he jokingly asked, "Who died?" His attitude changed quickly when the royal guards whipped out their swords and threatened his chin. "Someone important, I'll wager," he uttered.

"Order arms!" shouted the chief of the chamber. "The Professor is Emperor Alph's special guest."

The chief of the chamber was a heavyset man named Oliver, whose lifestyle among the higher levels of the empire shaped his body much like an overturned egg. One look around the room told the Professor that many of the men enjoyed an abundance of foodstuffs, even if the serfs sometimes had to hungry.

"Thank you for that," the Professor said as he stretched his back and straightened his ascot. "Not a fan of having sharp, pointy things aimed at me."

"Apologies, Professor," said Oliver. "There is terrible news this morning. Emperor Alph perished during the night."

The Professor simply stared unblinkingly while he processed the comment. "No, that can't be right."

"It is," spoke Omar, the butler with the long face and the exceptionally large bridge in his nose. He bowed deeply and admitted, "I saw him myself. And I know what _dead_ looks like."

"I'm very sorry to hear that," the Professor replied. "Has an investigation begun yet?"

One of the men wore the uniform of the Emperor's samurai guard, minus the helmet and mask. His face was narrow and his head was bald, revealing one long scar across his scalp. Named Harris, he answered the Professor, "We were just about to begin."

"Good," said the Professor with great enthusiasm. "Has Alph been moved since he was found?"

After reprimanding him for being disrespectful, Oliver said, "The Emperor was found in his meditation room last night. He has already been taken to be entombed."

"Fitting end for an honorable man, but it is a bit annoying to have the crime scene contaminated. Although I guess I should point out I don't have a kit for fingerprints or gunshot residue, and none of you knows what I'm talking about anyway so let's move on. You say it happened inside the meditation room during the night, yes?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then begin by gathering everyone with access to the building. That will mean gathering the entire royal court including all staff members, servants, and livestock. I would especially like to talk to the doctor who examined the body."

With a nod from Harris, samurai messengers dispersed throughout the palace to locate and gather all personnel. Harris looked slightly confused at the Professor when he asked, "Livestock?"

"Just in case a mareep or something wanted revenge for last night's lamb chops."

Locating and calling on every person with overnight access to the palace didn't take long. Every butler, maid, samurai, judge, family member, and concubine lined up inside the state room, which was big enough to hold everyone while the Professor paced back and forth in front of them trying to put pieces of an investigation together.

"Tell me this first," he said, still pacing. "Who found the Emperor?"

The butler Thomas raised a single finger to draw attention to himself. He was very lanky and had a bit of a hunch from his years of constant bowing and never looking a superior in the face. "I did, sir."

"Great. What were the circumstances of the discovery?" Thomas didn't seem to understand the question and so he rephrased it as, "What were you doing when you discovered him?"

"Delivering a message."

"What message?"

Thomas was caught off guard by how quickly the Professor spoke—specifically that he began speaking before Thomas finished answering the question. That made him slow to answer the second question, which made the Professor even more impatient.

"Come on. We haven't got all day. What was the message?"

"Apologies, master. The Lady requested his presence."

"Right. Lady. Which lady? There are dozens of ladies in the palace."

"It was I, Professor," offered the primary wife reticently. Her face was obscured by tear-streaked makeup, but the Professor recognized her readily. "I requested my husband return for the evening. I thought he was with the harem."

"He was meditating in his room," Thomas clarified.

"Yes, thank you, Thomas," the Professor said, already moving on. "Let's go here then: Why were you concerned about your husband being with the harem?"

Looking down as if in shame, she answered very softly, "It was my night."

"Your night for what?" Now everyone looked down at the floor, ashamed even to consider the question. Only one thing made everybody _that_ nervous: "Oh. Of course." He waved an apology to Iset, Alph's primary wife and Jomon's mother. "Never mind the question. Instead, answer me this: How often did Emperor Alph spend the evening alone in meditation?"

"Regularly," answered Oliver. "Meditation before bed helped him sleep well through the night. He suffered from digestive problems and achy muscles. The bellflowers also helped to soothe his pains."

"I see," said the Professor as he stroked a beard that was nonexistent on his face. "Who examined the body?"

An elderly man of thirty-five wearing long robes with the sash undone raised his hand. This man had glasses on his face thick enough to increase visual acuity four times. "I did."

"Dr. Asher, right? I believe we met last night."

"Yes, Professor."

Thomas suggested, "I saw his body, too."

"Thank you, Thomas, but I'm more interested in the medical perspective. So tell me, Dr. Asher, have you examined the Emperor on any previous, recent date, perhaps for a physical wellness exam?"

"Yes. Every week."

"And have you ever noticed any unnatural bruises, puncture marks, or boils that you and the Emperor could not explain through his medical difficulty?"

"His skin was prone to light bruising, but he and his wives increased the number of servants in order to reduce his need for physical exertion. Of the last two years, he has performed no activity that would give him the kinds of wounds you described."

The Professor nodded. Dr. Asher confirmed his suspicions. "And when you examined the Emperor after he was found last night, did he have any wounds that could not naturally be explained?"

Dr. Asher shook his head. "No physical wounds were present anywhere on the body."

"No wounds. Hmm." He began pacing rapidly. "That does increase the difficulty. How about fingerprints? No, wait. I'm centuries too early on that one. So what can we do instead? We need to figure out what happened to cause the Emperor's death. If it is murder, proving it won't be easy until we know what happened. I suppose it could have been poison, but proving it will be difficult without the ability to perform toxicology reports. Of course, we are talking about a man who was fifty-three years old—ancient relative to the day's average lifespan—so maybe murder isn't the correct cause of death. But, fortunately for all of you, Emperor Alph was a friend of mine, so I'm going to solve this case for you."

Bowing as he spoke, Jomon said, "You bring honor to my father."

"Yes," said the Professor, suddenly focused on Jomon. Approaching despite his suspicion, he said, "You're the older son, correct? So with the Emperor's death, you now ascend the throne." Stepping back and pointing dramatically, he added, "You had everything to gain by killing your father!"

Immediately, Harris shouted, "Arrest him!" Four samurai guards surrounded and detained Jomon, much to the silent chagrin of his servants and supporters.

"Jomon," his mother Iset uttered. "Is this true? Did you really kill your father?"

"I did not," Jomon insisted. "I swear to you all, I am not guilty."

"A trial will determine the truth," Oliver asserted. "In the meantime, Penta will ascend the throne temporarily."

The Professor eyed Penta warily. "Will he? You know, it seems to me that you, Penta, have quite a lot to gain by your brother's arrest. If you killed your father, you must have known the blame would fall upon Jomon, and then _you_ could ascend the throne in his stead!"

Immediately, Harris shouted, "Arrest him!" Four more samurai guards surrounded and detained Penta, now drawing the crowd into stifled murmurs. Penta's mother Tilly was disapproved particularly with the accusation as she muttered a few colorful curses in the Professor's direction. Harris directed another samurai to detain her and suggest, "Perhaps you killed the Emperor to place blame on Iset. Everyone knows you despise her for being first wife."

Not so certain with that motive, the Professor rubbed his uncombed hair and said, "I'm starting to see why the means-motive-opportunity model became so popular." More to the crowd, he suggested, "Why don't we let everyone go until we have evidence to suspect someone is guilty? I'm sure if we looked, everyone has a motive and the opportunity to kill the Emperor. Otherwise we end up with a lot of preposterous suggestions."

"It's a coincidence that he should die during the night after you arrived," Penta pointed out.

"Like that one. Hey, wait!" The guards began to detain him, as well. He resisted their embrace and jerked himself free. Harris signaled for them to let him be for the moment. "I'll thank you not to wrinkle the ascot."

Oliver pointed out, "This is not helpful. Do you have any advice for locating the Emperor's killer or not? Now is an excellent time to prove your innocence. After all," he chuckled nervously, "it is an incredible coincidence that you showed up again just before the Emperor passed."

"Yes," the Professor uttered. Everyone could see from the look in his eyes the wheels spinning rapidly inside his head. "It _is_ an incredible coincidence for something to show up only hours before the Emperor was killed, and without a mark on him." He looked over to Harris. "Where did you put that specimen you brought back from the Temple of Alph this morning?"

"The glyphic Pokémon? It is downstairs in the veterinarian's laboratory."

The Professor clapped his hands together. "Then that's where we must go."

"Why, Professor?" Tilly asked. "Are you saying a Pokémon could have killed my husband without leaving a single mark?"

"I'm saying, Your Highness, that it's about time your people learned the power of psychic-type Pokémon."


	9. Psychictype Pokémon

Psychic-type Pokémon

Despite the curious crowd surrounding her and peering over her shoulders as she worked, Claire wasn't to the point of exploring her interest in the unown yet. She completed hand sketches of the temple's entire layout, identified the construction material, and scribbled down all of the writings on the wall. She made impression sketches of the walls just in case the TARDIS's translation chip only affected what she saw and not the reality of the walls. When she got back to her own time, maybe the sketches would be the original writings.

Most fascinating to her was the societal behavior of the unown. They had distinct differences from humans, obviously, but only selected unown were allowed in the upper room. Claire wasn't worldly enough to discern the difference. She assumed those unown were leaders—royalty or elders, perhaps. If she were more of a psychologist, she would have enjoyed observing the relationships between the pokémon. That behavior is what drew her attention to the upper room, and alerted her to an issue with examining it.

Being a personal guest of the royal court, Claire was escorted by a small regiment of three samurai guards, including young Denyen. Decades before the idea of unions and limited hourly work, Denyen and the other guards were called into consecutive shifts. And they insisted the Emperor's personal worship room remain sacred and untouched by a lesser mortal. The strict belief that the Emperor's domain is reserved for only the Emperor's bloodline resulted in Claire's abandoning her effort to enter the worship room. She only caught a glimpse of gold and assumed it a decadent room like those found in many ancient tombs.

As she remained on the lower floor continuing her impression sketches she was watched by the floating creatures with deep curiosity.

"Does it not disturb you to have hundreds of unknown pokémon watch while you work?" he questioned of the diligent worker.

So diligent, in fact, she hardly noticed his presence and failed to answer his question for a fair minute. "The pokémon are drawn to this place for some reason," she answered. "I'm accustomed to their being here."

"You are accustomed? But they only appeared last night."

Keeping the current epoch in mind, she said, "It feels like they've been here forever."

A second guard Jared spoke up at that moment. He was older than Denyen by ten years, and he wore his entire uniform—mask and all—like he might get released from the samurai ranks if he ever dressed down.

"If I may ask, what do you know about these pokémon? They seem so different from the rhydon, the mareep, and the other wildlife I've seen within the country. For a woman, you seem to know as much as the Emperor knows."

Claire hardly even noticed the sexist comment. "The only thing really mysterious about unown is where they come from. They are glyphic that absorb nutrients from the air and from the walls they cling to. Researchers always said they only took the forms of the Latin alphabet, but I recently learned that's not necessarily true. They have some kind of hidden power, but they aren't really a battling species of pokémon; their origin is currently what draws the attention of researchers."

"You say they do not eat," Denyen realized. "Do they also not talk?"

"There is a sort of cry that occurs when they move, but speaking is not a capability they possess without mouths. Considering, however, the elaborate messages they spell out without error, it is certainly reasonable to assume they communicate with one another telepathically."

"What is 'telepathically'?" asked Jared.

"Mind to mind," Claire explained, moving her fingers from her forehead to his. "It's a way of knowing what the other person, or pokémon, is thinking without actually using our mouths. A lot of psychic type pokémon do it. I'm surprised you don't know about it."

"I do not understand."

Claire took a deep breath and tried to think about how she might explain unown to a four-year-old child; that's about the level of understanding these people had regarding pokémon. She was suddenly impressed to consider how much information was gained during the next fourteen hundred years.

"Psychic pokémon tend to lack physical prowess. I'm no biologist, but here's the way I think of it. All living organisms generate energy within their bodies and spend that energy in various ways, whether for immediate survival, procreation, what have you. We and the rhydons tend to spend that energy in our muscles in order to move our bodies. Psychic pokémon use the energy differently, usually in their brains in order to generate some effect that takes place outside of the body such as communication or movements. Belle says using psychic abilities requires a great deal more energy than physical abilities, which is one reason her kadabra eats so darn much and is probably the reason unown spend such lengths of time clinging to walls while they gather sustenance."

"Do you mean to say," asked Denyen, "that these creatures can attack without moving?"

"Yes. When threatened enough to defend themselves, they attack psychically. But unown are not known for violence and are highly unlikely to attack. You really have nothing to worry about from them."

The third samurai, a veteran of the last war, was a quiet man named Daniel. He very closely followed the adage: "A wise man speaks because he has something to say." Wearing a mask with pointed features like those of a devil, he drew his sword and held it in a fighting stance, the blade aimed toward the unown. They backed away from him quickly, startled by his sudden movement.

Daniel asked, "Then it is possible these pokémon killed the Emperor?"

Without missing a beat, Claire said, "Yeah, I suppose it would be no real task to… Wait. The Emperor's dead?"

* * *

><p>"I am aware that the Professor is highly traveled and a personal friend of our late Emperor," Oliver stated, "but as chamber chief, it is my responsibility to take up this investigation. I believe it is best we begin by investigating the whereabouts of Jomon."<p>

The Emperor's eldest son looked shocked at the suggestion. "Investigate me?"

With a nod, Oliver pointed out, "You had the most to gain."

"I certainly did not kill my father."

"An investigation will prove whether that's true," Oliver declared. He signaled to Harris and requested, "Place him under house arrest until we determine his innocence." At the command, two samurai detained Jomon and led him from the throne room.

"He is innocent," his mother Iset insisted. Despite the look of pure worry on her face, she was still a beautiful woman. "Where is the Professor?"

"The Professor is at the Emperor's temple to determine if the new creatures may be responsible for the murder," explained the butler Omar, head bowed the entire time to avoid making eye contact with anyone of a higher social status.

"Let the Professor explore his far-fetched theories," Oliver suggested. "I believe our culprit is not a creature but a man, and this investigation will prove me right. We must determine precisely where everyone was last night and what activities they completed. Harris, you will collect reports from every person with access to the palace. I want full reports of what they remember starting from the unveiling of the temple."

"Does that include reports from the Professor and his wife?"

"I will discuss the events with them myself," Oliver answered.

Penta asked him, "Are you going to investigate the new pokémon, too?"

"I would be remiss if I did not accept the possibility," Oliver admitted. "We all remember when the previous samurai captain was impaled by that herd of rampaging stantler. I will determine whether this theory about new pokémon is worth pursuit or if the Professor puts too much faith in a creature that resembles a glyph."

Iset was escorted back to her room while her son was investigated. If he was found guilty, she would undoubtedly be convicted with him, and he would never ascend the throne he deserved.

* * *

><p>The Professor arrived at the Temple of Alph escorted by his own small regiment, intending to keep him "safe from hungry mareep, curious nidorans, and mobile bellflowers," as he put it. The samurai assumed he was being facetious with the last suggestion. He told them to wait through just a few years more of plant evolution.<p>

Claire was inside the temple taking notes, just as he suspected she would be. The unown began circling him rapidly, a gesture the samurai guards immediately interpreted as hostile.

"No, hold on, men," he insisted, urging them to put their swords away for what felt like the twentieth time. "Thank goodness you don't have guns yet or I'd have holes blown in every part of me. I'd be a walking block of Swiss cheese with an ascot."

"And you'd still look ridiculous," Claire commented. "Speaking of which, did you know these people actually think the unown might have killed the Emperor?"

"They do?" the Professor asked as he eyed the masks of Denyen and his cohort warily. "That's more of an investigative leap than I would have thought possible from this age. I thought only I would develop that hypothesis."

"You think it might be true?"

The Professor scoffed loudly and blew a lot of spittle in the process. "That's preposterous. Of course the unown didn't kill Alph. _Emperor_ Alph," he emphasized as he leaned back to avoid the swords of indignant bodyguards. Continuing as if nothing happened, he pointed out, "The unown would have been hunted to extinction if that were the case. And we both know that never happened." He sat down next to where Claire scribbled her notes. "No, it's much more likely the culprit is a human."

Claire watched him curiously for a moment. "Are you really from another planet?"

"Is it so hard to believe another planet would have human-like species of its own?"

"Not at all. If another planet out there exists with similar atmospheric and ecological conditions to those of Earth, then it makes perfect sense. Are you from such a planet?"

"Almost."

"What does 'almost' mean?" she asked with a laugh.

The Professor smiled and looked up in the direction of the temple's ceiling, but really looking straight through the wall and beyond the boundaries of Earth's atmosphere.

"It's a planet with bright, silver-leafed trees that shimmer and turn amber in the glow of the burnt-orange skies. Vast mountain ranges with field of deep, red grass and capped with sludgy snow that illuminated the world when the second sun rose in the south skies."

"It sounds… colorful." Claire wanted to say "beautiful," but she wasn't able to grasp the combination of an orange sky with red grass.

"It's beautiful," he assured her. His voice trailed off as if to contradict his claim. "A beautiful environment, and yet no place for a human."

Claire was cautious of that comment. Softly so as not to upset him, she asked, "You don't really like people from this planet, do you?"

"Humans are a wonderful species. Cruel and compassionate, pleasant and frustrating, joyful and morose… They create poetry and develop amazing structures. Humans are in possession of unlimited potential as a species. I do not fear all humans for what a few bad eggs have wrought."

Trying to piece together what he was saying, Claire wondered, "Do you think there may be a few bad eggs around here now?"

After a moment of silence, the Professor stood up and said, "All I know is that these unown have not hurt anyone. They rather liked the Emperor. Apparently he reminded them of a cartoon character."

"The unown watch cartoons?" Claire said with a chuckle.

"Apparently so. I'd be very curious to see this dimension of theirs someday. But for now, let us return to this palace and let these psychic pokémon get settled into the home they've selected for themselves. And put away your sketch pad. We've got a murder to solve." A few of the unown seemed to droop in disappointment at his impending departure. The Professor smiled at them. "Of course I'll come back and chat. I want to hear all about your home dimension. You all just get settled, okay? See if you can't spell something."

"You understand them," Claire realized suddenly.

He looked bewildered by her off-the-cuff comment. "Of course I do. I speak everything. I told you this already."

"I just had a thought," Claire expounded. "You can talk to the unown, and they are psychic."

"And?"

Claire thought he'd get it faster than that. "Psychic means they have access to information not readily available to the rest of us."

"And?"

It was like he deliberately ignored what she said. She just stared back at him, wondering if maybe his hyperactive brain functioned so quickly he found difficulty finding time to interpret her words in context.

Suddenly a wave of realization passed over his face. "Oh."


	10. Motive

Motive

"Ah, Professor," recognized Oliver when the Professor and Claire entered the throne room. "I was soon on my way to locate the two of you. You have just saved me a trip."

"Always happy to help," said the Professor with a tone that said he had no intention of claiming credit from a coincidence. He was, however, more interested in finding out what questions Oliver had. "What is it you need from me?"

"_Us_," Claire corrected him.

"Right. What she said."

Oliver looked at the samurai men who still guarded each entrance and exit to the room. Much as he wanted to speak with the Professor more privately, the samurai were tasked with maintaining the peace and security while the regency—consisting of himself, Captain Harris, and Dr. Asher—possessed temporary rule of the empire. As such, he held no real command over the samurai until a new emperor ascended.

Instead, he lowered his voice. "I hoped you might have some information about the new pokémon creatures that Harris and his men spotted within the late emperor's new place of worship."

"There's not much to tell," he answered. "They're called _unown_, mostly because not a whole lot is known about them. What is known is they shape themselves like written characters and spend a lot of time lying dormant."

"Could they be responsible for the Emperor's death?"

"Certainly not. The unown are mostly harmless."

Oliver stated, "A man in my position has much greater knowledge than the average citizen. I know of this word _psychic_ you used earlier. It means those pokémon can enter and influence the minds of men, does it not?"

"_Psychic_ is a broad term," Claire pointed out. "Some psychic types can read minds, but some have little more than the ability to influence the positions of items around a room."

"Aha. Then does it not also follow those pokémon can influence the health of a beloved emperor?"

"That's a fair suspicion," the Professor agreed, "but I give you the utmost guarantee that unown cannot actually read minds or hear thoughts. They _can_ detect a person's emotional state and they tend to respond enthusiastically, but they do not possess any sort of ability to _influence_ emotions."

"What about other internal controls?" Oliver pressed. A single bead of sweat appeared along his hairline. He seemed almost desperate to find the Emperor's killer. "If they can move items around a room, surely it is not much of a stretch to move the Emperor's organs around his body and kill him that way."

The Professor shook his head and began to walk away, speaking without concern for the guards overhearing. "What you're suggesting doesn't make any sense. The unown lack any motive for killing Alph. It would be one thing if their power caused some sort of rupture that he got caught up in, but that didn't happen. He died peacefully in his room alone. He was fifty-three years old. In this day and age, that's well past the average man's lifespan."

But then a look crossed the Professor's face Claire couldn't quite place. He turned dramatically to face Oliver and pointed. "Why are you so eager to place the blame on the unown?"

"I am merely being thorough in my investigation," Oliver answered. "I do not appreciate the accusation."

"I haven't accused anyone of anything. But you are awfully insistent in accusing a few pokémon of murdering a human they've never met. It makes me wonder if you have some ulterior reason for presenting the face of an investigation."

Oliver's face bloated and turned bright red. "Such insolence! My only aim is to find the truth."

"Aren't you hiding something?" the Professor prodded.

"I'll have no more of this." Oliver stormed off in a huff.

Before he made it out of the room, the Professor said to him, "Alph selected Jomon to be his successor, yet you still have him detained. Is it fair for me to assume that the good emperor determined Jomon to be not only older but the better leader?"

Oliver accepted the opportunity to save face by shifting the blame from himself. "Penta will make an equal emperor. He is much wiser than his brother." With that, he completed his storm-off.

Claire looked thoughtfully to the Professor. "Do you really think the chamber chief was responsible for Alph's death?"

"Not really, but look how squirrely he got. He's definitely hiding something. If he's not responsible, I get the feeling he's covering up for whomever is responsible."

"I don't know." She leaned in to whisper so the guards couldn't hear. "I wouldn't be surprised if the guards were involved. They're everywhere at all times: They have access to everything and everyone, plus they knew they have a convenient scapegoat in the unown."

"Preposterous, Claire. The samurai are an intensely loyal group bound by a strict code of honor. They don't even go to the bathroom without an order from their commander."

Claire motioned as if to display a possibility the Professor himself just presented. "So maybe Captain Harris is the one responsible. He's one of the omnipresent samurai, he's in apposition to have Alph's trust, and any of these guards would readily die for him."

The Professor made a face as he struggled with the proposal. "I don't know. It doesn't sound like any code of honor for a devout samurai to follow. Besides, Harris hasn't really the motive. Killing Alph does nothing to help his social standing. He gains no more wealth or good fortune with it."

"What about Oliver? No wealth gained there. He's still not part of the bloodline, and there are two princes from whom to select a new emperor."

The Professor tapped his chin and stroked the beard he did not have. "Yes, that's true. Two potential new emperors do carry with them the strongest motives for Alph's murder." He paused for a moment and smacked his forehead a few times with his fist. "I just can't think of how they did it. There was not a trace on the body… That really does make it sound as if a pokémon were involved."

"Have you seen the body yourself?"

"What do you mean?"

Claire made a face. "I _mean_, did you actually view the body or did you just take someone's word for it that Alph had no marks on him."

The Professor put on a stern visage, pointed straight up for a moment, paused, and then pointed directly at his cohort. "Claire, you are potentially a genius. That was too simple for me to think up on my own." He turned and motioned her to follow him. "Let's go pay the good Dr. Asher a visit."

The silence covering the Temple of Alph was broken when footsteps began to echo the marble structures. They were the slow footsteps signaling the approach of a teenage man bearing a semi-permanent scowl upon his face. Four steps into the temple, the shoed footsteps of a man were drowned out by the thunderous echo of a rhyhorn's heavy leg. Each step from the man-sized rhinoceros sparked the attention of the energetic unown, prompting them to swarm the younger prince and his pokémon guardian. The unown kept a fair distance from him, but their circling built up static in the air and caused Penta's red robes to billow.

Penta was startled by the sudden activity of these frightening creatures. Each had a single eye that never blinked but stared incessantly, watching every shift in his gait, every nervous twitch as his eyes darted from unown to unown. His rhyhorn noticed his tension and braced itself, awaiting the order to strike.

"What are you?" he asked them.

They responded by shifting their positions in the air and producing mellow cries, but their communication was incomprehensible to the visitor.

"Do you really possess the power to affect your surroundings without making physical contact?"

The unown all stared for a moment. Maybe they couldn't understand Penta's question, or maybe they didn't appreciate the question and refused to answer, or maybe they were trying to figure out how to show him what they could do. The anticipation made him twitchy, nervous. He felt his fingers tingle and goose bumps covered his skin.

But it wasn't anticipation. The temperature was falling dramatically. It wasn't long before the silk sleeves of Penta's robe began to crackle under a cake of frost. His rhyhorn cried uncomfortably in the cold. The temperature slowed its metabolism and suffered the rhyhorn incredibly subcutaneous pain. As a battler and proof of Penta's right to the throne, it was losing its strength.

"Stop," Penta uttered through chattering teeth. "I approve."

The temperature didn't rise, but its decline halted. The climate air entered the temple again and reminded Penta of the air outside—proof positive of the power the unown possessed. Wherever they come from and for whatever reason, they held true power. With power like that at his beck and whim, his father's murder was no longer necessary to obtain the throne.

The unown watched Penta motionlessly.

"Did you hear me? I approve of your power. You even bested the mighty rhyhorn. Your power is unmatched and I will have it supporting my reign." His vigor and excitement pushed him past the pain of the frost and enabled him to speak firmly and strongly to the pokémon. A strong speaker, he knew, was a strong leader. Pokémon responded only to the word of an emperor with true strength. "I command you to give your power to me!"

He was convinced the unown would follow as requested. They all drooped in the air as if to acquiesce. Just as his emotions welled up inside and he envisioned his rule, Penta felt incredible pain in his belly. He lurched in an attempt to dull the pain, but it expanded despite his effort. His insides twisted around and compounded the pain. His stomach fell empty like it dropped down to his feet.

The unown glared at Penta with reddened eyes. Their bodies vibrated with synchronized resonation.

Penta let out a voiceless roar as he felt every muscle fiber in his body rip apart. Within mere moments, his body disappeared—his entire existence vanished.

The eyes of the unown returned to their former, peaceful color, and the pokémon resumed their positions drifting through the air of the temple.

The morgue was much cleaner than Claire expected. She thought cleanliness was neglected this far back in time, long before knowledge of pathogens and contaminants were as prevalent as in the modern day. Yet Dr. Asher kept the room well organized and very clean, although the organization may have been out of necessity. The morgue was filled with the bodies of deceased citizens and perished livestock. She counted two mareep, a nidoran of each sex, and what looked like an ancestor of a bellsprout. All were cut open from earlier autopsies.

"What say, good doctor?" asked the Professor.

"Professor," Dr. Asher recognized. His look of surprise was magnified behind his thick glasses, causing the Professor to react with a start and Claire to bust out laughing. Asher removed the glasses from his face and assumed a more serious expression. "Forgive me. How can I help you?"

"I was hoping to see our dearly departed emperor's body."

"That's impossible," Asher replied. "No one else may view Emperor Alph III's body."

"Yeah, yeah. The Emperor's body is sacred," Claire mocked. When the Professor looked cross at her, she said, "What? I've noticed a theme around here." To Dr. Asher, she said, "We have a few questions about his death and want to verify your autopsy findings."

"My findings are immaculate," Asher insisted. He looked hurt by the assertion that he missed something.

"We do not question what you found," the Professor clarified. "We are simply curious about what you _didn't_ find. We're from out of town, and so we'd only like to offer a second set of eyes. And a third set. Unless you have an assistant or something who already helped and we'd actually be offering a third and fourth set of eyes."

Dr. Asher held up a hand. "I understand. You were invited here personally by Emperor Alph, and so I will allow you to accept personal privileges. But if I am questioned regarding your contact with the Emperor's body, I will claim you threatened me and detained me with your pokémon."

"Fair enough," Claire accepted. Who was going to know they were there, anyway?

The mortician led Claire and the Professor to a side door hiding the autopsy room. It wasn't cooled, but it didn't smell much worse than everything else did pre-plumbing. Asher still had a little time to remove the bodies before they completely destroyed the scent of the morgue. Three male and one female body lay on three of the tables Asher past as he led the guests to the second room where Emperor Alph's body had its privacy.

"Who are they?" the Professor asked.

"Two hunters, a would-be warrior, and a concubine. The hunters were positioned on the hilltop when the ground gave way and dropped them twelve meters onto some jagged rocks." They had open wounds in their bodies, most notably in their skulls. "The warrior was attempting to command his flaafy in a battle against a rhydon when both he and the sheep fell into a fissure." The boy's skin showed the many broken bones he suffered. "The concubine was sentenced to death for venturing outside of the harem." She was missing her right hand.

"Alph had a harem?" Claire asked incredulously.

"Remember the times," the Professor reminded her gently. He pointed her to the second room. "The Emperor, remember?"

After Dr. Asher showed them into the room with Alph's body, he simply said, "Excuse me" and left the room.

"Let's have a quick look-see, shall we?" The Professor pulled the decorative cover from Alph's body to get a better look. After he and Claire both gave the body a thorough examination, he realized Dr. Asher was correct when he said there was no physical trauma present on the body. The closest things were frail forearms, slight calluses on his fingertips, and minor skin irritation in his pelvic region. And the autopsy cuts.

"What's next?" Claire asked, also realizing they didn't have a microscope or an incubator to study blood cultures.

The next best thing, the Professor brandished his sonic screwdriver. As the activated the glowing geode, he ran the device up and down Alph's body once, then stopped the device and turned to look at the results.

"No internal injuries," he noted. "Poison."

"Poison? What kind? Arsenic? Cyanide?"

"No, a biological agent. A completely natural poison taken straight from a living creature."

"Could it be a bellsprout? Or whatever the ancestor from this age is called? They're poisonous. If he ate one of those by accident, that might do it."

"Feeding it to him would do the trick, too," the Professor agreed. "But that scenario seems unlikely. The Emperor has a personal cook who never does the gardening himself, and no bellsprout would just sit in a garden without resisting when picked. It definitely seems more plausible Alph was injected with something. But he lacks puncture marks."

Claire considered books and television shows she witnessed in which a character was murdered via poison. "Isn't skin irritation another indicator of poison?"

Curious, the Professor examined Alph's irritation, nervous about looking too closely at that particular location. "Are you suggesting someone poisoned his… junior emperor?"

Shrugging, she said, "It's possible, isn't it?"

He smiled at her. "Impressive deduction for an archaeologist. Let's keep it going. The only people who could poison him there would be his wives or concubines. A butler may help him dress but would never be able to touch him. And I can't really imagine a scenario in which his sons would want to."

"Then… Is it a coincidence we have a dead concubine in the other room?"

The Professor darted back to the side of the autopsied concubine. He immediately examined her wrist with the missing hand. "This is not how she died." Showing the wrist to Claire, he elaborated, "See how there's no blood gathering around the wound? That suggests her hand was cut off post mortem, or after she died."

"I know what post mortem means," she replied while the Professor scanned the concubine with his sonic screwdriver.

"The same traces of poison as Alph. They both died from the same substance."

Claire looked over her shoulder to check for Dr. Asher. He wasn't nearby. Whispering, she asked, "Is Dr. Asher the one responsible for Emperor Alph's murder? He could have cut this concubine's hand off to hide the fact that she died from the same poison as the Emperor."

Suddenly the door behind them slammed shut, and a loud clacking sound suggested it was locked.

The Professor watched the door for a moment before looking to Claire with a clueless expression. "You could be right about him."


	11. Too Many Pieces

Too Many Pieces

"Let's run through the possibilities while we have some quiet time," the Professor requested, pacing around the morgue's autopsy rooms. "We've determined the good Emperor was poisoned, as was this concubine. That means Dr. Asher clearly played a role in Emperor Alph's untimely demise."

"Was it?" Claire asked. She wasn't pacing. She simply watched the Professor as if he were a child who needed to spend some excess energy before settling.

"Was it what?"

"Was it untimely? Alph was supposed to die, wasn't he? Unless we've actually changed the past…"

"Don't be fooled for a minute, Claire. Everything we do influences everything around us. There are certain fixed points in history—events that must occur regardless of the specific circumstances—but everything else is just like living in the day. Now, before we lose track of the point entirely, there must be more to this situation than just the doctor. For starters, there is no time he would have access to this concubine. The harem is sacred ground under strict control at all times in order to avoid desecrating the women."

"Plus there's no motive," Claire added. "Or at least not one that we know of." She was checking out all the ancient tools and other odds and ends while she listened.

"Right. No motive. So maybe Asher wasn't involved. Surely someone else could have access to the morgue. Or perhaps whoever poisoned the concubine also made sure to cut off her hand before Asher ever saw her body. But that doesn't explain why the doctor would try to lock us in here."

Lightly tapping the nidoran corpses on the table with a pair of forceps, Claire suggested, "Do you think he derived the poison from these? That sounds like something only a medicine man would know how to do. Another tick mark in the 'Asher Did It' column."

"Yes, but there's still the matter of the sacred harem ground. No men can go there at all. And how would this woman get poisoned without the harem supervisor's knowledge? Nothing happens inside the harem without the supervisor's knowledge. But what if the harem supervisor was involved? The probability of a successful crime diminishes with increased involvement. Dr. Asher and Ariel the Harem Supervisor would need to have perfect timing to be sure _this_ girl ended up poisoned and with the Emperor before the poison could kill her or even present symptoms."

"Didn't you say Jomon was the most likely suspect? Maybe he co-opted the doctor into poisoning his father."

"Maybe so," the Professor said. He looked at Claire sideways out of curiosity. "You seemed taken with him yesterday, yet now you accuse him of murder."

"To be fair, _you_ accused him of murder. And I didn't get attached to him. We're going to be gone soon, and it's not like I'm looking to pick out curtains."

Looking a bit flustered, the Professor said, "Yes, now I do seem to recall building the initial accusation. Well, what say we get out of here now and find out how people react to our suspicions? That might point us in the right direction."

Dropping one of her pokéballs, "I'm okay with that approach, but I'm bringing protection in case I was right about the samurai." Her pokéball opened and released a creature that looked like a four-foot-tall tree with two legs, a forked head, and three leaf-like fingers ending each arm. "Johto pokémon draw less attention, right?"

"I don't think a sudowoodo will be necessary for defense."

"How about for opening a door?"

The Professor grinned. "Also not necessary." He pointed his sonic screwdriver at the door and activated it. The geode resonated for two seconds when Claire heard the door click again as the bolt slid back the other way. The Professor pushed the door open. "Shall we?"

"You are such a show-off," Claire scolded as they walked through the door, her sudowoodo walking close behind.

"You were gonna knock the door down," the Professor teased back. "What does that make you?"

"Uncreative but effective."

Gathering everyone together took much longer this time. Oliver had the staff preparing to move forward with the coronation of the new emperor and couldn't be bothered to grant the Professor's outrageous requests. But when the Professor mentioned he knew who murdered Emperor Alph, Oliver quickly changed his message. He summoned the other two members of the regency, several of the servants who attended to the Emperor, and the family members.

"My friends," started the Professor, "I believe we have uncovered the identity of the man who caused the murder of our late Emperor Usimare Alph III."

"Is that so?" Oliver asked a little too pompously for Claire's taste. "By all means, Professor. Please regale us with your account of these events passed."

"Very well," said the Professor. To the entire room, he announced, "Emperor Alph was poisoned! The evidence of that is visible upon his body. I believe the poison was derived from the blood of a pair of nidoran, a task requiring an understanding of blood and toxins which could only have been completed by Dr. Asher. But the Emperor was not the only person afflicted with this poison. One of the concubines also suffered, and it was through her that the poison spread to the Emperor. Given that the poor woman is also a resident in the morgue, I suspect she was unaware of the poisoning, and that implicates Ariel, the supervisor of the harem."

The story spurred several uncertain glances around the room. Everyone wondered if Dr. Asher could really be responsible for the Emperor's death. The only that bothered Claire was motive. Asher seemed to have none. She tried talking to the servants, but all of them indicated Asher had a good relationship with Alph, leaving little obvious reason to want him dead. She didn't know enough about Ariel to determine a motive, either. General scuttlebutt indicated Ariel was chosen because she was physically strong enough to manhandle any soldiers who violated the sanctity of the harem ground.

"An interesting story," Oliver suggested. "But I have another."

"What do you mean?" asked the Professor. Claire didn't like the tone in Oliver's voice.

"You are an old acquaintance of Emperor Alph. That put you in a prime position to cause his death."

"That's absurd!" Claire protested.

"I'm not done!" Oliver's countenance hardened immensely as he continued. "You obviously possess the knowledge for poison. A man as well traveled as you is not only in a position to develop the poison, but also to point the accusation toward the scapegoat of your choosing. You brought into the Emperor's temple an army of unknown creatures as you prepare to take over the empire."

Claire couldn't understand why the Professor didn't argue. Obviously Oliver's assertion was false. Why would a time traveler have any desire to kill an emperor whose legacy was only beneficence? But the Professor didn't defend himself. He simply watched and listened patiently as Oliver grew more eloquent and his story grew more grandiose.

When Oliver finished his accusation and asked for a denial, the Professor replied, "You're working with them. Perhaps even the mastermind."

Oliver sneered, and then he commanded the guards, "Arrest them."

"To what end?" continued the Professor. "What do you gain from killing the man who built this most glorious empire? The one empire standing erect among those dragged down by their own armaments—one whose flag is loved where all others are feared. Emperor Alph built such an empire destined to reign and evolve its peoples, yet you chose the grave for him. Why?"

Receiving no answer, the Professor didn't resist as the guards pulled his arms behind him and dragged him across the floor. As two guards moved for Claire, they found her less cooperative.

Particularly, her sudowoodo took it personally when his trainer was attacked. He stepped in between Claire and the two guards abruptly. They instinctively drew their katana and held the blades in offensive stances. The sudowoodo did not respond to the threat except to stand firmly. Two more guards approached from behind, and when the sudowoodo turned to look, the first two guards attacked.

"O'Connell!" Claire shouted.

The swords clanged loudly off O'Connell's rocky skin. The ringing traveled down the blades, through the hilts, and into the palms of the guards, bringing with it immense pain and the urge to drop their weapons. Trained never to relinquish their weapons during battle, the guards endured the pain instead, forcing all of their willpower into maintaining their grips and none of it into defending their faces from Claire's fists. O'Connell deflected strikes from the other two guards and pushed them to the ground, generally leaving them unharmed.

"Ow!" Claire moaned as she tried to shake the pain from her hands.

"That's good. You made your point," the Professor assured her as he gently put his hands on both of her shoulders and pulled her away from the dishonored guards. "Elevate your hand. It'll help diminish the pain."

Claire raised her hand over her head while the Professor entreated with the rest of the court.

"I know this is a difficult situation for all of you. On the one hand, you have the regents chosen simply by default as temporary heads of state to lead and protect you in the event of a crisis. On the other hand, you have a pair of interlopers who witnessed your former emperor's rise and were personally invited as trusted guests into his home. Knowing who to trust is more of a puzzle than a Rubik's cube." When he saw the expressions on his audience's face, he flinched. "Right. Too early for that. Just ask yourself whose judgment held you in the highest esteem: your emperor who created this peaceful nation or the state that mandates a specific regency in the event you were left without a leader."

People began to steal glances at one another, but none spoke up in agreement with the Professor.

"Well, that's disappointing," he admitted softly.

Finally Iset stepped forward and spoke louder than she had since Claire met her. Wearing her purple robes and traditional makeup and looking every bit the part of the emperor's first wife, she informed the congregation, "My husband accepted the Professor as his oldest and wisest friend. His trust for the Professor knew no bounds. My husband believed him incapable of treachery of any magnitude."

More glances were stolen, but still none spoke in defense of Emperor Alph's wishes.

"What you have just heard," Oliver explained, "is a desperate tale told by a treacherous woman on attempt to protect those who attained her goal for her. As first wife, her son stands to take the throne upon the Emperor's death. No doubt she wished to expedite the process. Arrest her."

"Now hold on!" the Professor exclaimed. He was shocked by the insinuation that Iset was involved in any kind of conspiracy to kill her husband. But no one held on to await his words. Two guards apprehended him from behind while a third aimed the tip of a katana to his throat.

Claire hadn't considered that traveling to the actual time of Emperor Alph might put her in jeopardy. Taken up in the romantic allure of knowledge and anthropology, she failed to stop and consider the very real danger she put herself in by investigating the death of one of history's strongest leaders. She was no fighter, nor was she even much of a trainer. She never had a real interest or need for battling pokémon with her career. O'Connell could offer her some protection, but he could only do so much for her without endangering the lives of all the people gathered nearby.

Struck with an epiphany, Claire looked at her sudowoodo with amazement, allowing her brain to formulate a plan. "Johto only," she repeated softly to herself.

When the first guard struck at O'Connell, Claire dropped another pokéball. A flash of light ensued and produced the silky form of Croft, her roserade. With bouqueted arms, sepals flowing like a gown, and white petals adorning her head, Croft stood beside Claire as a vision of beauty. And being a native pokémon to the Hoenn region but more commonly found in Sinnoh, the citizens of the Johto region were awed by the mysterious new creature.

"Grass Whistle," Claire requested. Croft lifted her arm to her mouth and began to blow through the sepal. The air filled with a melodious buzz akin to a bamboo flute. The buzz was airy and perfectly pitched as the eerie melody haunted the grand hall, bouncing along the marble structures and filling the heads of all present. Claire knew the trick to ignoring the tune through mental focus, but everyone else suffered from body-numbing comfort. The guards, the servants, even Dr. Asher and Oliver slumped over as the melody took effect.

Claire took the opportunity to slip past the guards with O'Connell, who ran with his hands over his ears.

"Have your sudowoodo grab the misses," the Professor requested.

Claire was stunned by his movement. He didn't look drowsy at all. "Why isn't Grass Whistle affecting you?"

"It just takes mental focus. Not very difficult to muster for one whose brain never really shuts off. Now grab her and let's go!"

O'Connell removed one arm from his head, scooped up Iset by the waist, and followed his trainer through the door of the grand hall. Croft glided elegantly across the floor, her melody flowing as elegantly as her sepal gown until after she crossed the threshold and left the room. As the acoustics of the room reverberated with the song for an extra moment, Croft took off at a run to catch up to her trainer, who hadn't made it terribly far because O'Connell was not a nimble creature.

"Where are we going?" asked Claire.

"We'll make a brief stop in the dungeon and then flee the Violet Palace."

"What's going on?"

"Jomon is still under arrest, and now the guards moved to arrest us and Iset. Obviously the conspiracy against the emperor spread farther than I realized. The entire regency is involved, and they have the support of the servant staff and the military. We must rescue Jomon, who is the rightful ruler, before he is executed unjustly."

The people here didn't have regular use of pokémon the way she did, and so Claire didn't predict much difficulty in creating Jomon's jailbreak. "What happens after we break him out?"

"We must exercise caution while we locate Penta."

"Because he's the reason Alph was killed and Jomon was blamed?"

The Professor smiled that impressed smile. "Let's hurry."


	12. Purple Twilight

Purple Twilight

"Captain!"

Drowsiness threatened to paralyze his body, but Harris fought against the hypnopompic daze with Denyen's help. When his eyes finally opened, he witnessed the apparent massacre in the grand hall. Citizens and soldiers alike littered the floor as if the hall were struck by an explosion.

"Are you alright, Captain?" Denyen offered to help Harris to his feet, but the first attempt failed as Harris's legs were still afflicted with atonia.

"Give me a moment," Harris requested.

"What happened here?"

"The Professor was here. And that woman summoned some powerful, unknown pokémon from thin air. I've never seen such magic. Are the citizens well?"

"They're alive," Denyen assured him. "It seems they've been asleep. You are the first to awaken."

Harris was able to reach his feet when he tried a second time, though he nearly tumbled if Denyen had not helped him steady himself. His legs still felt like jelly from the haunting, unnatural way to be put asleep. He'd never felt such effects before. The Professor and his wife were surely among the most powerful foes he'd met, though he recognized the honor within them.

"Why are you here?" Harris finally asked Denyen. "You were charged with accompanying Penta through today. Where is the prince?"

Denyen immediately dropped to his knees and placed his forehead to the floor. "Greatest apologies, Captain Harris. Penta confronted the new pokémon in the temple with the bravery of an emperor. The pokémon reacted poorly, however, and they did something to him. He disappeared into thin air."

"He disappeared?"

"Yes, sir. We failed in our assignment and await your punishment."

"Is he dead?"

"As far as I know, sir. The unknown pokémon appeared furious with his request for power. They froze his rhyhorn to death." He was getting difficult to understand while speaking into the floor. He looked ready to receive the ultimate, dishonorable punishment for his failure.

But Harris wasn't interested. The thought of Penta's death overwhelmed all other thoughts. With Penta dead, the plot was truly a failure. Even as Oliver and Asher awakened and rose to their feet, Harris was ready to dismiss Denyen and pardon the failure. If those unknown pokémon were really so powerful, there was nothing Denyen or his cohorts could have done to protect the ambitious prince.

"What happened?" Asher asked.

Oliver appeared furious. He shouted to an unconscious room, "Where are the prisoners?"

"The prisoners no longer matter," Harris insisted. "Penta is dead, killed by the unknown pokémon in the Temple of Alph. We must release Jomon."

"We will not!" Oliver argued. "Jomon is under arrest for murdering his father."

"Jomon is the rightful ruler. He is Emperor Usimare Alph III's only surviving heir."

"Without Penta, the Empire's rule will fall to the regency. That was always the plan!"

Harris rejected the notion. "Political greed prompted that decision. Penta would have allowed easier manipulation to ensure the longevity of the empire, but Jomon is already strong without us pulling the strings. The Empire will thrive under his rule."

Oliver glared and approached Harris with clenched fists. "After all the planning and what we've sacrificed for this plot, we cannot back down now. Jomon will not make an effective puppet. The only way to ensure the true destiny of the Empire of Alph is under my rule! My wisdom will make this empire great again!"

Harris recognized something in Oliver's eyes. He did not possess the eye of a man seeking to protect the people, but of one seeking to enrich his coffers. As the politician of the trio, leaving of the empire in the hands of the regency would place all affairs of state in Oliver's hands. Neither Harris nor Asher possessed the political intellect to combat his decisions. Clearly, the arrangement left Oliver feeling greedy and lustful.

"Denyen," Harris spoke.

"Yes, sir," the samurai replied into the floor.

"Rise to your feet." Denyen was reluctant to do it given the gravity of his infraction, but he was also unwilling to violate a command from his captain. As soon as he looked like a soldier again, Harris added, "Now take the chamber chief into custody."

Denyen's eyes went wide behind his mask. He was awestruck by the request.

Oliver gritted his teeth and snarled, "How _dare_ you!" As he threw a punch toward Harris's face, the samurai captain sidestepped the assault and retaliated by using the butt of his palm to pop Oliver's nose upward. While Oliver was stunned, Harris contorted his arm behind his back and demanded of his soldier, "Are you deaf, samurai? Detain this man at once for conspiracy to murder the royal family."

"Yes, sir," Denyen replied, still uncertain about his captain's decision. Daniel, one of his protection cohorts, still had binds with him and assumed custody of Oliver from Denyen. Slowly, the unconscious soldiers awakened in time to hear Harris's next command.

"Soldier, release Jomon from custody immediately and make arrangements for the coronation ceremony that will allow him to ascend the throne as Emperor Alph IV. Finally, take me into custody next."

"You, sir?"

"Of course. The charge is the same: conspiracy to murder the royal family. The same is true of Dr. Asher and Ariel. All others worked at our commands as they are honor-bound to do. The regency is at an end. Jomon will replace us from among the trusted members of society."

Denyen looked dazed and confused behind the mask. "Sir…"

"Do it, soldier. I am part of a plot to disrupt the empire's balance. Your honor compels you to detain me, just as my honor compels me to accept my judgment at trial."

Reluctantly, the soldiers bound Harris's arms and prepared to escort him to the dungeon. Before he was taken, Dr. Asher, likewise bound, asked, "Where is Iset? Did the Professor kidnap her?"

"Do not harm the Professor or his wife," Harris commanded. "They merely put us all to sleep when it would have been just as easy to kill us. They were protecting Iset from the conspiracy we put in place." Speaking softly to Denyen, he added, "You will want to find Tilly. She must know her son has been killed."

"Captain, Tilly was there. She witnessed the event when the pokémon killed Penta. Daniel and I left her at the temple under Jared's protection."

"She's still there?"

Looking guilty, Denyen hesitantly replied, "She refused to leave."

Suddenly the walls of the palace shook. Scrambling to the mezzanine overlooking the courtyard, Denyen and the bound Harris caught sight of an explosion far to the south. The blast was great, focused, and unnatural, blocking out the setting sun and leaving the sky tinged deep purple.

"Oh, dear," uttered Denyen.

"I admire the ingenuity, Claire, but wouldn't another Grass Whistle suffice just as well?" the Professor stated as they wandered through the dungeon halls.

"Doesn't a time-traveling professor like you have some understanding of three-dimensional physics?" Claire countered. "O'Connell is only four feet tall and weighs about a hundred pounds. It's difficult enough for him to carry Iset's dead weight over his shoulders and maintain our pace. Jomon is significantly heavier."

"Still, was it necessary to tase all of the guards like that? A few of the poor sods wet themselves."

"Not my favorite side effect, either, but they should have just stepped aside like we asked them to. At least they aren't terribly hurt." She lifted her small pachirisu in the palm of her hand and stroked his tired head. "More physics: Chan simply doesn't have the capacity to do much more than offer fifteen men a little zap." He squeaked pleasantly, but otherwise his motion was reserved as testament to his exhaustion.

"Well, a pachirisu can be quite deadly if you're not careful."

"Stop worrying," Claire insisted as she withdrew the pokémon into its pokéball in a flash of light. "Chan is not a battling pokémon. He spends his training time helping me excavate ruins." She motioned to the cell on the far wall. "Besides, isn't that him now? Why don't you do your sonic screwdriving thing and open the cell?"

Jomon's condition wasn't terribly worse than the last time Claire saw him. He still appeared reasonably healthy—the guards must have treated him well as the son of their emperor—but he wore the clothes of a commoner instead of royalty. He reacted with surprise as he caught sight of Claire and the Professor.

"Why are you here?" he asked. Then he noticed his mother's unconscious body draped over the arms of a sudowoodo. "And what happened to my mother?"

"She's fine," the Professor said as he aimed the illuminated blue geode at the lock on the cell door. "She's just taking a dirt nap." He stopped and tilted his head as if to consider his word choice. "Or does that mean something else? Bah! Regardless, she's alright. We just need to hurry and get you out of here."

"I cannot leave," Jomon argued. "That would be dishonorable. I must stand trial."

"You must escape and clear your name," Claire mocked him. "Sorry to say your father's advisors set up a conspiracy to kill him and frame you for it."

"That sounds preposterous. Why would a good man like Oliver wish to lie to the people? He is unable to ascend the throne. My brother is the next in line, and my sister after him."

"Maybe he wants your brother on the throne," the Professor suggested. "You have already come of age and proven yourself as a warrior. Your brother is still young and will need close advisement from his viziers. That is as close as Oliver can come to taking the throne for himself."

Jomon looked baffled, but he acknowledged that he was imprisoned for murdering his father—an act he most assuredly would never dream of committing. "If there is a true conspiracy, then what is our next step? Surely we cannot simply confront Oliver and expect everything to work out for the best."

"You must prove your inheritance of the throne," the Professor said. He extended his hand, and after a moment's hesitation, Jomon accepted it. The Professor put on a goofy grin. "But first, we must run!"

"Run? Why?"

"Because I always run."

Jomon was still baffled, but Claire was intrigued. With the Professor in the lead and O'Connell in tow, the party escaped the dungeon rapidly, an easier task than breaking in with all the guards unconscious already.

Once they broke out into open air, Claire asked, "Where should we go? The TARDIS?"

"No, the TARDIS can't help us set things right here," the Professor replied, "and it won't be good for us to leave things like this."

"Then where?"

"We should head toward my father's temple," Jomon suggested. The Professor and Claire both looked to him for an explanation. "I may not be able to prove my innocence in my father's death, but I can prove that I am the rightful heir to the empire. The pokémon respond only to members of the royal family. Specifically the rhydons can only be commanded by a true leader."

Claire had to remind herself that this was a different time. In her home, a pokéball was all it took to command the pokémon; here, pokéball technology was centuries away from development and perfection. If these people believed that only the royal family could control the pokémon, then maybe that was exactly the right approach to take.

"Good. Let's go then," the Professor agreed. Straight south away from the palace and through the city they ran, hoping to make good time getting to the temple. The sooner the situation got cleared up, the safer the empire would be.

In the distance, a massive form appeared in the sky. As it descended closer to the ground, its appearance was easier to discern. It was a long, flying serpent, its body slate in color with a red-and-black underbelly. Golden bones arched over its midsection and protruded along its slender body like spikes. Six heavy streamers, spread wide like wings, trailed through the air as the mighty creature drew nearer.

"Oh, my," the Professor uttered.

Claire was able to recognize a pokémon as well as any, but she had never seen such a beast before. "Professor, what is that?"

"Giratina, the Renegade Pokémon," he uttered. "How can it be here?" He drew his sonic screwdriver into the air, but as Giratina flew close overhead, the downdrafts from its wings shoved all bodies into the ground and dropped the sonic screwdriver from the Professor's hand.

Giratina wasn't targeting the Professor, however. Once it passed, it continued straight into Violet City, its tail dragged low and sweeping the second layer straight off one of the homes. Every flap of its mighty wings toppled the people on the streets, crushed weaker structures, and spread dust through the skies. And that was only on the first pass. Turning in the air, Giratina readied another strike. Sweeping through the city again, whirlwinds of dust thrust people into walls and dropped debris on many innocent witnesses.

Flapping its wings to hover overhead, Giratina released a barrage of aura bursts as rain on the city. Each collision with the buildings below collapsed walls, and falling debris caused even more damage. Whether beneath the aura spheres or the walls, the body count rose rapidly among the people unable to find appropriate shelter.

At the end of the pass, Giratina stooped briefly on the mountain cliff just to the south of town, overseeing everything in the city with the Violet Palace jutting most prominently. Its serpentine body reared up, and its eyes began to draw in shadow energy from the sky. Its body shimmered with the influx of energy. When the light reached the tip of the tail, Giratina braced itself and lunged the entire distance across the city straight through the Violet Palace, splitting the castle in half. It moved so quickly as to be invisible.

"That creature is destroying the city!" Jomon exclaimed. "Where did it come from?"

"It came from another dimension, one parallel to our own world and yet simultaneously the very antithesis of this world," the Professor described.

"I don't understand," said Jomon, having only a rudimentary understanding of the world outside of Johto.

"Think of the universe as a coin," the Professor suggested. He made a face as if to struggle with that very analogy. "A shapeless, ever-expanding coin. No, that's a dumb idea. The universe isn't a coin. Forget it. But our world might be located on one side of such a coin, and on the other side is another world that is the complete opposite—up is down, black is white, short is long. And the culmination of that antimatter is a beast powerful to destroy everything it comes into contact with simply by coming into contact with it. That is the power of Giratina."

Claire looked confused. "Do this coin…?"

"Forget the coin!" the Professor insisted. He was obviously not a fan of trying to explain extradimensional physics to people who could only understand the third dimension.

"Fine. Then this _antimatter_… How does it work? You said it destroys simply by coming into contact with things. So matter and antimatter can't coexist?"

"That's correct. Every contact results in an explosion at the atomic level."

"Okay. So if antimatter and matter always destroy each other, then how is it able to stand on the mountain or fly through the air without destroying itself? Is antimatter stronger than matter?"

"The two forces are mutually destructive and would destroy one another completely _if_ the two forces were in equal opposition," the Professor said. "The fact that Giratina has not been destroyed means the matter present in the air and the earth does not overwhelm the antimatter within its body, which suggests that this very version of Giratina we see is either a shadow representing itself in this dimension, or else it's something different altogether."

Claire narrowed her eyes at him. "Different how?"

"We should go," the Professor decided.

"Go where?"

He looked from Claire to Jomon and back. "Believe this: If we confront Giratina head-on or even in ambush, we will lose and the empire will crumble. There is only one place Giratina could have come from—one place where we will find other pokémon that have access to another dimension and might infuse Giratina with the Griseous particles that sustain it. That place is where we will find a solution."

Jomon pointed out, "I cannot abandon my empire. That creature appears to be resting, but it will strike again."

"Then we'd better hurry."


	13. Tearing the Fabric

Tearing the Fabric

Sorrow_ was too gentle a word. _Grief_ couldn't capture the magnitude. _Anguish_ fell short of describing the pain inherent with witnessing the elimination of her son at the whim of mere animals taking the shape of writing characters. Tilly found herself unable to walk and the image of her son—her legacy—burned into her eyes. What grave misfortune follows those with great destinies!_

"_You beasts," she uttered in the direction of the unown, floating throughout the room as if nothing happened. "Foul demons!" Her cry caught the attention of every variety of unown. All eyes trained on her and all movement was halted within the walls of the temple save for the sounds of her bellowing._

_With tears streaking her makeup and rendering her with a terrible visage, she shouted, "That was my son! You destroyed my son!" She stumbled into the room, her gait uncertain and weak. "He was a strong boy with limitless potential. He used to sit on the throne and pretend he was the ruler." Her knees buckled as she hit the floor, still weeping._

"_He so looked up to his father. He stood present at every major declaration, every ceremony, every battle. Oh, he loved the battles. His father was weak-hearted and merciful, but he knew how to command pokémon. He instilled that capacity in my son—that love for a good show of strength. Yet he was still such a sensitive boy. He always knew how to talk to the staff and the peasants. He was destined to be a king among men. The empire would have flourished at his feet. International leaders would have groveled beneath his strength and admired his cunning._

"_But tradition dictated he would forever be stuck in the shadow of his half-brother. All through the fluke of being born second! A boy with the world at his fingertips must seize the opportunity and eliminate the one obstacle. That's why Oliver suggested a plot to murder Usimare and lay the blame on Jomon. I couldn't turn down the opportunity. It was the only way for Penta to achieve his heritage. Maybe I shouldn't have accepted."_

_Tilly slumped against the wall and buried her face in her hands. "My son!" Her voice broke as she uttered one last time, "You killed my son."_

_In utter silence, the unown hovered above the floor, drooping with the level of Tilly's emotion. Her grief became theirs. Their white eyes fell to blue, and then suddenly their color rushed to purple. The unown began orbiting Tilly's body, drifting around on all sides of her. Their power turned the very air purple._

"_What is this feeling?" she asked as the air tinged her skin. "Will you kill me, too?"_

_The feeling within her was not pain, however. She felt greater comfort than before. Her emotions felt supported and her body felt warm. Her sorrow was still there, but she suddenly felt a great pang of guilt, and along with it a desire to make things right._

"_You wish to apologize? How?"_

_The feeling of power welled up inside Tilly. She felt a sudden connection to the unown. As if their motion acted as a battery providing her with mainlined energy, she could almost hear the words form inside her mind. These strange creatures were combining their power to grant her a wish. She could bring Penta back to life with a single wish._

_Lifting her head and inhaling as much of the purple air as she could muster, Tilly spoke, "Give me power. All of it."_

_The instantaneous transfer of power at that level created an explosion that shook the temple and spread to the sky beyond. The orange twilight was replaced by purple night, simply radiating energy from the temple. Tilly rose to her feet without effort; she simply hovered upright. Power made her lighter than air. The darkness of the unlit temple turned bright to her eyes. She lacked nothing, and every whim was hers now. Instead of wasting her wish on a son who needed her guidance for every decision, she obtained power far beyond what her husband once possessed. The Johto region was too small a goal now: The entire world was at her fingertips. By closing her eyes, she felt the presences, the emotions, and the histories of every life form within the continent. All awaited the rule of one undisputed as herself._

_Stepping out of the temple and into the purple night she created, Tilly was greeted by Jared._

"_Are you safe, Empress?" he asked, groveling in front of her. He'd seen the explosion and wondered if the pokémon of the temple removed her just as viciously as they had Penta._

"_You bore me," Tilly said. She held her hand in front of her and slowly closed her fingers across her palm. As her fingers drew closer, purple energy surrounding Tilly drew inward, focusing at her core. With her hand clenched, the energy became tight and painful in her chest. The instant the pain grew too great, she released her fist and allowed the energy within her to disperse from her body in one quick burst aimed toward Jared. The career samurai was enveloped by a black shroud, which lifted him centimeters above the ground and inflicted unbearable pain for the brief moment before he exploded._

_Tilly merely smiled at the sight. Having power herself was so much more fulfilling than obtaining it through her husband or her son. In exchange for her son's life, this was a fair trade._

"_Now to bring forth a son worthy of rule," she declared to no one, and yet to everyone. She held out her hand again toward the open land in front of the temple. A black, circular shadow appeared along the surface of the clay, and from it emerged a shadow of a horned, serpentine entity with six wings and eyes shining of a pink hue, enough to pierce a man's soul with a single gaze._

"_Go introduce yourself to the people, Penta," Tilly spoke to the shadow. "Frighten them and terrorize them but do not destroy the city fully. This kingdom without subjects will be only a goddess in a field."_

_The shadow burst from the ground into the air, solidifying and taking a more distinct form as it traveled. Using her new lighter-than-air power, Tilly rose into the air and drifted away from the temple._

"Here's the plan," the Professor said as the Temple of Alph came into view. "We head inside, find the Griseous leak, and reverse the flow using the sonic screwdriver. Giratina and the unown will be drawn back into their home dimension, and simple as that, the problem is solved."

Only meters from the temple entrance, a shadow reached across the field, thin at first but suddenly expanding across the field.

"Run!" the Professor shouted immediately. Claire was quick to notice the shadow and, without knowing its purpose or effect, to assume danger was attached to it. The instant Claire stepped out of the shadow, the ground erupted into a field of spikes and blades formed from shadows, all missing Claire's leg by only centimeters.

"Is everyone alright?" the Professor asked, taking a quick headcount.

"Ah, the _Professor_," came an ominous tone from the mountainside. Tilly stood there, adorned in dark clothing and producing a thick air about her body. With the low valley offering Claire minimal protection and the skyscraping mountain in front of her, Tilly stood not on solid ground but in the air directly in front of the rock face.

Jomon asked incredulously, "Tilly?"

"Well if it isn't the emperor proper," she spoke with a condescending tone. "I thought you were locked up in the dungeon."

"How is she flying?" Claire asked, unconcerned with much else.

"Griseous particles," the Professor answered as he scanned with the sonic screwdriver. "She's not actually flying. Her body resides in another dimension—the same dimension Giratina and the unown came from. What we see is a spiritual representation of her body in this dimension. As she moves through the landscape of the other dimension, we perceive it as flying. It's a bit complicated. Suffice it to say this is not the same woman you met the other day."

"Noted. And for the record, that didn't sound too complicated."

"Enough!" Tilly commanded. "Your antics may have captured my husband's heart, but I have little patience for your humor. There is no place for you in my new empire."

Claire didn't like the sound of that. "How does this fit into the plan?"

The Professor answered in a way that made everything sound like one sentence: "Never mind. Forget the plan. The plan's rubbish. I was making it up as we went."

"You're not good at escape plans?"

"I'm good at talking," he insisted. Suddenly his eyes widened and a smile peeked from his face. Looking up to Tilly, he asked, "How did you convince the unown to give you their power?"

Tilly scoffed. "Those creatures in the temple? It turns out, disgusting as they are with one eye and no body, they have their uses. Penta beseeched them to serve him as all pokémon should, but they rebelled and killed him." Claire gasped at the thought of unown killing a man, but the Professor showed no signs of astonishment. "Monopolizing on their guilt, I obtained their power as a show of remorse. Now we are all connected."

"And you draw from them like a wireless battery," the Professor accepted. "But why was Penta asking the unown for help? With the conspiracy in place, he was already set to take the throne and rule the empire."

"You know as well as I do," Tilly explained, "he was not suited to rule. He was immature and short-tempered. Those creatures came from another world. Perhaps they could have given him clarity and wisdom beyond the ages. But events have unfolded in greater ways than I ever dreamed." She brought her fingers together and then spread them slowly, producing a swirling mass of shadow energy between them.

"Of course," the Professor realized. "This was never about your son. It was about your personal lust for power. Women in this society hardly have rights better than property, but they do receive specials favors through relationships with powerful men. Marrying the emperor wasn't enough; that is why you initiated the plot against Alph."

Affirming the premise, Tilly said, "A man can have many wives, but he will only ever have one mother. And now, all the power in the world rests in my hands. Penta!" Just when Claire thought Tilly went crazy, calling for her dead son, a shadow passed by overhead and Giratina landed heavily on the mountainside behind her. With the giant serpent crashed down, the mountain seemed to collapse and rocks began to tumble. One especially large boulder cracked into the roof of the temple, crumbling the elaborate architecture.

"This does not look safe," Jomon confessed gently. "What I wouldn't give for the protection of a rhydon right now."

With that thought, Claire dropped a pokéball. A flash of light produced a pokémon like a dragonfly, much smaller in stature than Giratina but still larger than the humans facing Giratina's wrath. Somewhat serpentine in his appearance, the flygon was one-third the length and one-seventh the girth of his opponent. Physics alone dictated the outcome of any potential confrontation.

"What are you doing?" the Professor asked Claire.

She shrugged. "Making it up as I go."

Tilly began to laugh at the size difference between combatants and the mere notion of anyone thinking they could escape her omnipotence. "Kill them."

Giratina leaned back to suck in air, and then it lunged forward and released a stream of yellow fire to incinerate the party. Thinking quickly for one who rarely battles, Claire asked Indy to use Protect. As the bug-like eyes shone, an enhanced wall of wind picked up in front of the group. When the fire contacted the wall, it dispersed in all directions across the wall but never penetrated, dissipating the fire and protecting the party.

"You think that little bug can protect you from my son reborn?" Tilly mocked.

"Not consecutively," Claire muttered. Protect was a sort of clutch move that could exhaust Indy if she asked it of him many more times. She needed to distract Giratina from the group and save Indy's energy for more deserving situations. "Take flight, Indy," she requested of the flygon. "This battle will need to be aerial."

Indy hopped into the air and began fluttering his wings rapidly like a hummingbird. He started by hovering just above the ground, even though it meant kicking sand up in everyone's faces. It would have taken too long to gain altitude with wings fluttering like that. But once he started moving horizontally, he was able to rise more easily with an upward swoop. Within moments, he gained the high ground over Giratina.

"Go kill that thing," Tilly requested. Giratina took off from the cliff with a massive downdraft that crumbled more of the mountain and smashed into more of the temple. It flew much more easily than Indy, almost like floating by willpower—very ghostly in appearance. Giratina flew straight toward Indy with open jaws, ready to devour the smaller creature. Indy narrowly slipped away, but the wake brought on by Giratina's speed toppled Indy and threatened to drop him from the sky.

"Use Dragonbreath!" Claire called. Luckily, limited mobility also meant Indy could regain his mobility more quickly. He somersaulted in the air and turned to face Giratina, releasing a stream of yellow fire from his belly. The fire caught Giratina's tail as the massive body turned in the air, but it didn't seem to cause much damage overall.

"It's a ghost-type," the Professor said to Claire. "Dragon and ghost. Giratina is. Use dragon and dark moves to hurt it."

"What are you prattling about?" Tilly asked.

"Nothing you would know about," the Professor called back. After all, it would be another twelve hundred years before Professor Linnaeus began to classify all known pokémon by elemental attribute. To Claire again, he said, "Remember, you can use dragon attacks to hurt Giratina, but its dragon attacks are also effective against Indy. He will need to avoid being hit."

"Wait, the key to winning is _not_ to get hit?" Claire countered. "Now shut up and let me battle. I don't do this a lot so I'm a little out of practice. Use Dragon Claw!"

Giratina emitted a purple gust that assaulted Indy and shoved him backward through the air. Indy weathered the attack and began to move toward Giratina when the ghostly dragon increased its speed drastically and became invisible.

"Drop, Indy!"

The flygon stopped fluttering its wings and dropped from its position like a stone. The fall moved him out of Giratina's flight path enough to avoid a direct hit, but he was still clipped by the speeding dragon's claws. Protected as he was by scales, no blood was drawn from Indy, though a section of scales were still peeled from the base of his neck. Acting through the pain, Indy clung to Giratina's underbelly and drilled the claws of his right arm straight through Giratina's hardened skin.

"Yes! Nice hit!" Claire shouted. "Now use Hyper Beam!"

Indy aimed for the open wound on Giratina's belly with open mouth and the energy of his core charging. Giratina swooped up suddenly, hoping to shake the flygon clinging to its underside. It was unsuccessful. Indy successfully unleashed a Hyper Beam attack inside Giratina's belly.

The pain of the attack caused Giratina to lurch sharply; combined with the exhaustion Indy felt from such a powerful attack, Giratina dislodged the unwelcome hitchhiker. Indy seemed to float in the air for just a moment when Giratina slammed its heavy tail across the smaller pokémon and hurled it to the ground, too stunned to respond. Claire shrieked with vicarious shock when Indy slammed onto the ground. Giratina followed close behind. Seconds before it landed on top of Indy, Claire withdrew her flygon into his pokéball.

"You fought well, Indy," she whispered to the pokéball. But the pain he caused Giratina wasn't enough to stop the mighty dragon from quaking the ground when it slammed down.

Suddenly the beast's form began to shift. Its streaming wings merged into two much heavier wings. The spikes along its body shifted into feet as portions of the tail's mass bulked into legs. Still relatively serpentine in appearance, the dragon possessed six legs and wings wide enough to block out the moon. The hole in its chest appeared to seal over enough to stop the bleeding.

"Nice try with your little bug," Tilly mocked, "but my son is stronger than you ever imagined." She looked at Giratina and motioned toward Claire and the Professor. "Kill them now."

As Giratina drew in another breath, the Professor asked, "Does the sudowoodo know Protect?"

"No."

"I was afraid of that."

With the energy growing in Giratina's belly, the ground began to quake violently. Too violently. The mountain avalanched and Claire and the Professor fell to the ground. The reaction was more than a single breath from Giratina could cause.

Before Giratina could attack, a large, stony-gray pokémon with a massive horn on its snout slammed into Giratina's side, followed closely by two more nearly identical pokémon. The three of them bulldozed Giratina, which caused its breath attack to falter and burst within its belly.

Suddenly Jomon rejoined Claire and helped her to her feet.

"Where'd you go?" she asked him.

"For reinforcements," he replied. "The Rhydon Unit is here."


	14. The Power of Teamwork

The Power of Teamwork

The way Giratina stood on upright on six legs, the bulky rhydons didn't even reach halfway up its torso. But together, they brought significant strength against the giant serpent. Three rhydons alternated attacks on all sides to keep Giratina busy and distracted while they whittled away at its stamina, building on the wounds Indy created.

"Rats will always find companions," Tilly mocked, "but they are still just rats. I can exterminate them all." Her body shone, and suddenly Giratina seemed to power up. With a single, blindly-fast spin move, to swiped all three rhydons simultaneously.

"We're running," the Professor told Claire softly. He grabbed her wrist and led her through the valley, over the rubble from the collapsing mountain and into the Temple of Alph. Building the temple in the shadow of a mountain seemed a bad choice suddenly as chunks of the roof and walls suffered damage from the battle with Giratina.

"Shouldn't we help Jomon? Three rhydons might not be able to stop that thing."

"Jomon is going to have the same odds of success without us as with us," the Professor pointed out. "Giratina is nigh unstoppable in a straight battle. We'll have to cut it off at its power source."

"Do you even _have_ any pokémon?" Claire asked.

"I try not to get too attached to living things," the Professor replied.

Walking inside the Temple of Alph this time shocked Claire even more than her first venture inside the TARDIS. Instead of golden walls decorated with various glyphs, the walls were invisible behind clusters of particles floating through the air like galaxies through the universe. Illumination came from the unown floating through the space, their eyes glowing a soft shade of purple.

"Be careful," the Professor warned. "We don't know exactly what we'll find in here. Be prepared to flee at any moment."

A loud crash suddenly hit the temple and shook its very foundation. The Professor and Claire grabbed one another to brace themselves while O'Connell leaned overhead to protect them from falling debris. But the largest debris collected at the front door, sealing the marble doors shut and preventing escape through the entrance.

The Professor sighed. "Right. Like I said: No turning back."

The air in the temple was creepy, and all the floating unown seemed lifeless. Claire wondered if the temple was still the same behind all the air, or if the unown had warped it into some brand new space, somewhat like the TARDIS. It felt like anything could happen in here, especially if the unown were accessing an anti-dimension while dwelling in this one.

"What's the plan?" she asked.

The Professor held his sonic screwdriver in the air and scanned the unown. His expression did not make him look happy with the results. "We need to stop the unown from generating power. I'd hoped it would be as easy as waking them, but it seems things were not intended to be so simple."

The Professor stepped through the passage into the next hallway and was immediately assaulted by a shadow in the dark. When he hit the wall, Claire realized the unown hadn't disappeared the temple; they only changed the air. His assailant seemed equally stunned by the realization of that fact and left himself open for O'Connell to land a quick strike to the head. The Professor's assailant dropped to the ground gripping his head.

"Thanks for that," the Professor said as he turned to find out who attacked him. It was a woman, bulky and with sharp facial features. She wore thick, dark-colored clothing, but they were nice clothes, suggesting some relation with the palace. The Professor recognized her as, "Ariel? Why are you here?"

"The harem supervisor?" Claire remembered the name.

Ariel scowled. "You? Have you come to put me to death for my crimes?"

"And what are your crimes that require a death sentence?" Following Ariel's subsequent gaze, Claire noticed a bag tied shut and a small, stone statue. She couldn't quite tell what the material was, but the shape of the statue was that of an omanyte.

"Maybe I can guess," Claire suggested. "You were part of the conspiracy to kill Alph. When you realized the Professor had it all figured out, you wanted to escape before we came looking for you. But you can't just leave without much money. That sack there is probably full of trinkets, and the statue has got to be worth something, too. Am I close?"

"I would say you're spot-on, Claire," the Professor replied.

With the sudowoodo in front of her, Ariel opted not to attack back. From her cowering position, she explained, "I spotted three samurai and thought they were out to bring me back. I hid in the temple hoping they would pass me by, but Prince Penta was with them, and he brought a rhyhorn. He commanded the floating pokémon to obey him, and they proceeded to kill him."

Claire gasped, and the Professor simply uttered, "Oh, dear. How did they do it?"

"I don't know. He looked like he was in pain, and then he suddenly disappeared."

"Either by implosion or drawn into the void," the Professor assumed.

"What happened to get from that to the super-powered widow?" Claire asked.

"I was scared to death when the pokémon killed Penta, but even though they saw me, they didn't harm me. I wanted to leave right then, but one samurai remained outside the door alongside Tilly. Tilly witnessed the event. She grieved heavily before the pokémon, and they responded by making her stronger. They've been nearly catatonic and floating around ever since."

"They offered her a wish expecting her to want her son back," the Professor surmised, "but instead she wanted power."

"How much power?" Claire asked.

"Almost limitless if we don't stop her." He looked around as if hoping to find the answer among the sleeping unown. "What we need is a brilliant stroke of genius. There must be something we can still do to awaken the unown and stop their resonating with Tilly."

Claire spent the last several years of her life researching and locating the Solaceon Ruins, but her early years were spent in studies of the Ruins of Alph. The ruins were a fascination of all archaeologists because of the puzzles. No one knew why the puzzles were in place or where the unown came from. Looking at the omanyte statue, she began to determine a purpose for the sealed rooms.

"If we separate the unown and seal them apart from one another, will that weaken their power?"

"What?" But he didn't give time for her to repeat the question. The Professor pressed his hands on both of Claire's cheeks and kissed her on the forehead. "Claire, you are simply a genius!" Turning away from her and walking toward the entrance to the temple, he began to speak as much to himself as to Claire and Ariel.

"The unown formerly dwelled in an alternate dimension comprising Griseous Particles and antimatter. Alone or in small groups, they have always been prey but when they gather in large numbers their power can create brand new worlds. Perfect resonance like they are exhibiting right now has only been achieved on two occasions. The first was the creation of our universe. The second was when… the TARDIS became an only child. We would be unable to disrupt these radio waves through simply closing the door on them. We'll have to add some sort of reciprocal signal in order to seal the unown into a deep sleep."

"Can you create such a signal?"

"I can," the Professor said, "but I'll need some kind of symbol to use as a seal." He reached for the sack Ariel carried and took the rope she used to hold it shut.

With a confused look on her face, Ariel asked, "A rope?"

"Any symbol will do for the first round," the Professor answered. Standing in the small passageway between the entranceway and the second hall, he pressed the rope against the frame and held up his sonic screwdriver. The blue geode grew bright and the sound of the tool resonated counter to the unown signal, creating such dissonance as to make the sounds louder than Claire heard yet. The stone walls of the temple began to close in the passageway, turning the rope into seal to maintain the door in place. Already, Claire felt the atmosphere in the temple weaken. The Professor lowered his sonic screwdriver and winked. "I'll bet you didn't know a rope could do that."

"No," Claire admitted. "But we don't have another one and there are supposed to be four doors in this temple to seal off the unown. Plus, after we do that, how are we going to get out of here?"

"One crisis at a time," the Professor insisted. He led the women past the second passage and stopped. "We'll need something this time with a little more energy to it. The rope was fine for a first run, but the sonic screwdriver doesn't have the power to seal every door alone."

Claire snatched the sack from Ariel and pulled out the first thing she got her hands on. It was a small, blue stone that shimmered in the light of the unown. "How about one of these?" she asked as she put on a grin and tossed the rock to the Professor.

"A water stone?" he asked.

"That has no power," Ariel objected. "It is simply a mineral from the mines nearby. Its unique existence makes it a valuable trade item with other countries."

"It's not unique to this place," the Professor corrected her, "but it does possess a certain level of radiation that you don't know about yet. It will do for our second door." Claire just smiled as he created another seal in the hallway and decreased the pressure in the atmosphere. When he stopped, he looked at the dimming geode on the sonic screwdriver. "I don't know how many more we can make."

"Two is all we need," Claire told him. But they'd still need a way out. The earth shook violently, reminding her that somewhere outside, Giratina fought with a team of rhydons and the mountain was collapsing on top of the temple. Staring up at the ceiling, she noticed the passage into the emperor's personal worship room on the second floor. It was a small room, but if the mountain collapsed overhead, maybe O'Connell or Indy could dig through the rock and create an exit.

"The fourth chamber," she commented. "We'll do that one next. And then we'll seal off this hall and climb to the top." Ariel eagerly grabbed the ladder and began to climb, not looking to wait for a clear exit. Claire called after her, "There's probably no exit up there!"

"Let her go," the Professor said. "She won't find anything, but she can't contribute anything more, anyway. Let's keep going. We need to seal off _all_ of the unown in order to get rid of that Giratina."

The two of them ran to the last chamber and stood in the doorway. As he stared at it, the Professor decided, "We need something more than a stone this time. The sonic screwdriver needs to be recharged, but without the TARDIS right here, I can't do that."

"You can draw energy from something living, right?" Claire asked.

"Yes. Like you?"

"Like a pokémon," she said with an incredulous look.

"It would have to be a rare one in order to prevent the seal from being easily broken," the Professor said. In response to Claire's look, he said, "You must have known already that the seals may be broken one day. The goal is to make it difficult. So name a pokémon. Come on, _anything_ as long as it's the rarest pokémon you can think of."

"The rarest," Claire repeated. Scoffing at the thought, she remembered her studies of the Ruins of Alph. "Ho-Oh is the rarest I can think of."

"The Guardian of the Skies, a bird living its entire life in flight, never resting and resurrecting itself in its ashes. A symbol of fortune and friendship, said to bestow happiness upon those who witness it."

Claire nodded, feeling the sorrow in the Professor's words. "Then you've heard of it."

The Professor pulled a single pokéball from within his jacket. As he opened it, Claire took a step back, her heart rate rising rapidly in anticipation of the only pokémon the Professor carried with him. A flash of red light quickly shrank and failed to take form, materializing only as a pile of goop with a plain, smiling face.

"A ditto?" Claire asked. "I thought you might actually have something rare."

"A ditto that has spent much time with the time vortex," the Professor clarified. "A ditto's body is like that of an undifferentiated cell. Contact with other cells gives it that ability to transform and become that new cell."

"Everyone knows what a ditto can do."

"But this ditto is special. It has an eidetic memory. Any pokémon it has previously copied, it can transform into again." He looked to the ditto and nodded. The ditto simply stretched itself and smiled, and then its body began to grow and take new shape. It grew bigger and developed red feathers. Its underside turned white, but its tail feathers shone yellow and prismatic, causing a rainbow effect every time it flies and earning it the nickname "the Rainbow Pokémon." And as no normal pokémon, the ditto generated new cells at an incredible rate, rapidly creating new mass at immeasurable speed; it grew to twelve-and-a-half-feet long and weighed almost 450 pounds within mere moments.

Recognizing the phoenix pokémon from the storybooks, Claire uttered, "A ho-oh. Then you've encountered one in the past?"

The Professor didn't answer her. He simply turned to the hall and said, "Ditto, stand near this frame. I'm going to draw energy from you to create a seal, so try to resonate with the sonic screwdriver if you can." The affirming cry from the pokémon didn't match the size of the bird, but the power coming from it was impressive. The body of the massive bird shimmered and turned blue in resonance with the sounds of the screwdriver. Slowly a door appeared in the passageway, sealed by the image of a phoenix.

"Good work, Ditto," the Professor said as he patted the bird. Quite rapidly, the bird shrank back to its former, goopy form. It still smiled, but it looked exhausted. The Professor withdrew the pokémon into its pokéball. "Rest now, old friend."

Claire ran her hand along the sealed door, noting how heavy it was. Nothing was likely to break through that without incredible force. "I can't believe this is where those doors came from," she uttered, thinking to the mystery of why the temple was sealed off. She never would have guessed that the unown inhabiting the temple once threatened the safety of the world.

"One more door," she announced.

The Professor shook the sonic screwdriver, which struggled desperately to remain lit. "Well, we're just about out of juice here, and given how much energy that drained from Ditto, we can't try that method again. It's too risky to take the power straight from a living creature."

Thinking on it for just a moment, Claire said, "Too risky to _take_. But what if the pokémon offered the energy up in a more natural way?"

"Like what? Executing an attack technique?" The Professor stopped his cynicism and stared back at Claire. "Like executing an attack technique! That's brilliant! But we'll need to make sure it's a move that won't hurt either of us for being nearby."

"I'm an archaeologist. The majority of my pokémon have moves that won't hurt me." She pulled a pokéball and summoned Chan, her white pachirisu to her side. She held out her hand while Chan scrambled up her leg and out on her arm. "Are you rested?" she asked him. Chan looked happy and sounded energetic, to which she smiled. "Are you ready?" she asked the Professor.

He aimed the sonic screwdriver at the frame while holding it near the pachirisu. "On your command, light him up."

"Alright. Chan, use Flash." With a high squeak and a burst of energy many times the size of the pachirisu's body, light filled the halls of the temple with such energy as to maintain the light for a time. Instead of dwelling in the air, all of that energy converged with the sonic screwdriver to create a seal across the hallway, dividing the temple into five sections. The unown continued to float, but the galactic air faded and was replaced by the darkness of the temple again.

"Well," the Professor uttered as he stowed his dead screwdriver. "Shall we see about an exit? Giratina ought to be significantly weakened by now, if it's even still out there."

With Chan back in his pokéball, Claire led the way up the ladder to the emperor's personal worship room. Ariel was still in there, pressing her hands along the walls to find some way out. "I see nothing," she announced.

The Professor reached up and pressed against the walls. "Yes, it is rather well built."

"Nothing that can't be taken apart by the elements," Claire countered. She summoned her roserade Croft to her side. "Use Giga Drain around the cinderblocks." Croft placed her bouquet-like hands around a cinderblock on the ceiling and began to draw in all the nutrients she could absorb, weakening the cement and turning it brittle. Scattering dozen of leaves from her arms, she manipulated a Magical Leaf attack into cutting around the edges of the cinderblock. By the time she executed the attack a third time, the cinderblock slid completely out of place and slammed onto the floor just over the hole to the ground floor. Only the barest twilight drifted in to illuminate the room, but they could see the sky, and it was no longer purple.

"Well done," the Professor said proudly. "Now we can get out of here."

Ariel shoved Croft aside and clambered to be the first out of the temple. As she rounded the roof, she took a tumble and somersaulted to the ground below. "What happened?" Claire wondered.

"That," answered the Professor, pointing to a series of blood spots where Ariel climbed. He gently reached for Croft and turned her arm outward. She had thorns on her limbs, hidden just like on a rose, and one of them possessed a small drop of Ariel's blood. "It appears in her selfishness, Ariel poisoned herself by accident."

The Professor and Claire each climbed out through the hole and stood on the ceiling for a moment to catch a view of the events. Ariel lay on the ground by the temple's entrance, contorted but alive on the rubble collected from avalanches. Giratina was just as large as before, but the mighty beast no longer gave off such a mighty air.

One rhydon appeared to be knocked out, but a second body slammed Giratina to the ground while the third stood a few yards back and prepared to charge. As it waited, the horn on its snout began to spin rapidly like a drill. When it collided with the body of Giratina, its drill horn punctured the skin and ripped the misty flesh. Instead of perishing the way living bodies do, Giratina simply turned to ash, staining the clay black.

"It seems that we did it, Claire," the Professor stated. "The unown are sealed away in the ruined Temple of Alph, Giratina is no longer a threat, and the conspiracy to murder Emperor Usimare Alph III has been brought to light. Not bad for your first trip through time, eh?"

With a groan, Claire asked, "Are all your trips like this?"

"Pretty much."

"Don't you ever use time travel to take a real vacation?"

"This doesn't relax you? Knowing the world might come to an end at any moment, then relieving that stress in one grand, baffling, impossible moment. This feeling right here? That's what relaxes me."

"I'm happy that you're happy," Claire groaned. "I'd settle for a massage."


	15. What's Next?

What's Next?

With Harris's testimony, all conspirators in the murder of Emperor Alph were arrested, including Oliver the chief of chamber, Ariel the harem overseer, two butlers, a treasury overseer, and two royal scribes. Tilly was also detained, though her mind was rendered almost useless by the rapid expansion and subsequent reduction of power within her cells. Denyen led the royal guard in defense of Jomon as they crowned him Emperor Alph IV.

"What's going to happen?" Claire asked the Professor.

"That's up to Jomon and his people now. They write their futures."

Disappointed, she said, "Well, yeah. But you already know how things are going to turn out from those decisions. So come on. Spill it."

He just grinned. "Inspired by the sight of your roserade, Jomon will take his countrymen north toward the region of Sinnoh. A small gathering of ambassadors from both regions leads to a spectacular merging of the two cultures. Jomon's reign will be long and benevolent, and it will end with Johto becoming a republic, very soon to become a part of a greater nation. New species of pokémon will begin to migrate through the regions. The region will prosper because of what you've done."

"It took both of us," she corrected him. "And Jomon. He really earned his kingdom the way he handled those rhydons. Belle is never going to believe me when I get home and tell her about all this."

The Professor paused for a moment as they looked out at ancient Violet City for the last time. "Is that what's next for Claire? One adventure and it's back to studying ancient civilizations through the items that survive the ages?"

"Is that supposed to be some sort of offer?"

"There's a lot more out there. All of time and space available at your whim. It doesn't all have to be a history lesson. You can take your dream vacation on the beaches of Pokémon Island. You can hone your battling skills in the very first Pokémon League tournament. Or if history really is what turns you on, we can go all the way back to watch the beginning of the universe. Whatever you can imagine, the TARDIS can take us there." He stroked the door frame of his blue box. "So what do you say?"

Claire thought about it for a moment. She'd always been engrossed in her work to the point nothing else mattered. She wanted to make a name by knowing everything that happened in the past. But here was a man—a brilliant, ridiculous, nutty, time-traveling, mad man—who was offering her the opportunity to go wherever she wanted to and actually _witness_ the past.

But not just the past. The future was also available. So much she didn't know about yet: merging societies, brand new pokémon, the legacy of her home culture…

"You said Jomon's people meet the people of Sinnoh and join cultures."

"Yeah."

"Can we swing by Belle's house quickly so she doesn't worry about me?"

"I can get you back at the exact moment we left. She'll never know you were gone."

Claire smiled at the possibilities. "Will we encounter any legendary pokémon?"

The Professor smiled and offered her his hand. "I guarantee it."


End file.
